How big is the Forbidden City?

The Forbidden City in Beijing is the imperial palace of China in Ming and Qing Dynasties, formerly known as the Forbidden City, located in the center of Beijing's central axis. The Forbidden City in Beijing is centered on three halls, covering an area of about 720,000 square meters, with a construction area of about10.5 million square meters. There are more than 70 palaces and 9000 houses.

The construction of the Forbidden City in Beijing began in the fourth year of Yongle (1406), based on the Forbidden City in Nanjing, and was completed in the eighteenth year of Yongle (1420), becoming the palace of twenty-four emperors in Ming and Qing dynasties. On the 14th National Day of the Republic of China (1925 10/0/010), the Palace Museum was formally established and opened.

The length of the Forbidden City in Beijing is 96 1 meter from north to south and 753 meters from east to west. Surrounded by a wall with a height of 10 meter, there is a moat with a width of 52 meters outside the city. There are four gates in the Forbidden City, the meridian gate in the south, the Shenwu gate in the north, the Donghua gate in the east and the Xihua gate in the west. There is a graceful turret at the four corners of the city wall, and there is a folk saying that there are nine beams, eighteen columns and seventy-two ridges to describe its complex structure.

Textual research on names:

The Forbidden City is also called the Forbidden City. In ancient China, the planning concept of "harmony between man and nature" was emphasized, and the stars in the sky were used to correspond to the capital planning, so as to highlight the legitimacy of political power and the supremacy of imperial power.

The Emperor of Heaven lives in Wei Zi Palace, and the emperor on earth claims that he is the "son of heaven" ordered by God. His residence should be a symbol of Wei Zi Palace, so as to conform to the Heaven Emperor. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty records that "there is a Wei Zi Palace in the sky, which is the residence of God". The king built a palace and liked it. "Wei Zi, Ziyuan, Zigong and so on have become synonymous with the Forbidden City.

Because the feudal palace was forbidden in ancient times, ordinary people could not enter it, so it was called "Purple Forbidden". In the early Ming Dynasty, it was called "Imperial City" together with the outer forbidden wall, but it was different from the outer forbidden wall in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, that is, Miyagi was called "Forbidden City" and the outer forbidden wall was called "Imperial City".

Baidu Encyclopedia-Beijing Forbidden City