The National Palace Museum,Magnificent Palace with Precious Works of Art
2 min readThe Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the endof the Qing Dynasty.It is located in the middle of Beijing,China,and now houses the PalaceMuseum.For almost five hundred years,it servedas the home of emperors and their households,as well as the ceremonial and political center ofChinese government.
Built from 1406 to 1420,the complexconsists of 980 buildings with 8,707 bays of roomsand covers 720,000m(7,800,000 sq ft).Thepalace complex exemplifies traditional Chinesepalatial architecture,and has influenced the cultural and architectural developments in East Asiaand elsewhere.The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987,and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.
Since 1925,the Forbidden City has been under the charge of the Palace Museum,whoseextensive collection of artwork and artifacts wereluilt upon the imperial collections of theMing and Qing Dynasties.Part of the museum’s former collection is now located in the NationalPalace Museum in Taipei.Both museums descend Iromi the same institution,but were split afterthe Chinese Civil War.
The site of the Forbidden City was situated on the Imperial City of the Mongol YuanDynasty.Upon the establishment of the Ming Dynasty,Emperor Hongwu moved the capitalfrom Beiiing in the north to Nanjing in te souu,cid oiccrcu that the Yuan palaces boh.down.When his son Zhu Di became the Emperor Yongle,he movedthe capital back to Beijing.and construction of what would become the Forbidden City began in 1406.
The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987 by UNESCO as the”Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties”,due to its significant place in the developmentof Chinese architecture and culture.It is currently administered by the Palace Museum,which iscarrying out a sixteen-year restoration project to repair and restore all buildings in the ForbiddenCity to their pre-1912 state.
In recent years,the presence of commercial enterprises in the Forbidden City has becomecontroversial.A Starbucks store that opened in 2000 sparked objections and eventually closed onJuly 13,2007.Chinese media also took notice of a pair of souvenir shops that refused to admitChinese citizens in order to price-gouge foreign customers in 2006.
