Forbidden City (1406–1420): Building the Ming Imperial Palace

The Forbidden City is the vast imperial palace complex at the heart of Beijing, built for the Ming dynasty’s Yongle Emperor between 1406 and 1420. For almost five centuries it was the home of China’s emperors and the centre of government, housing 24 rulers of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Today it is the Palace Museum and the largest surviving ensemble of traditional Chinese wooden architecture.

Background: moving the capital north

The first Ming emperor, Hongwu, ruled from Nanjing on the Yangtze River after founding the dynasty in 1368. His son Zhu Di had been Prince of Yan, based in the northern city of Beiping, which had earlier been the Mongol capital Khanbaliq (Dadu). After seizing the throne in the Jingnan Campaign, Zhu Di, now the Yongle Emperor, renamed Beiping “Beijing” (Northern Capital) in 1403.

Yongle had strong reasons to rule from the north. Beijing was his power base, far from the officials in Nanjing who remembered his usurpation, and it lay close to the frontier with the Mongols, the main military threat to the dynasty. In 1406 he ordered the construction of a new palace there, laid out partly on the site of the Yuan dynasty palaces.

Building the palace

The project took years of preparation. Officials were sent to the forests of Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Yunnan to find nanmu, a precious, durable hardwood used for the main columns. The great logs were floated down rivers and along the Grand Canal to Beijing, a journey that could take several years.

Other materials came from across the empire. Fine floor bricks, known as “golden bricks” because of their quality and cost, were fired in kilns near Suzhou. Huge marble blocks were quarried at Fangshan, south-west of Beijing. Research published in 2013 showed that some of the heaviest stones were moved in winter on sledges dragged over roads of ice made by pouring water from wells along the route.

Main construction took place mainly between 1417 and 1420. Ming and later accounts speak of around 100,000 skilled craftsmen and up to a million labourers, soldiers and convicts; these figures are traditional estimates rather than exact counts. The design and building are associated with the master carpenter Kuai Xiang and the Vietnamese-born eunuch Ruan An (Nguyen An), among others. The palace was completed in late 1420, and in early 1421 Beijing formally became the principal capital of the Ming dynasty.

Layout and symbolism

The Forbidden City is a rectangle about 961 metres long from north to south and 753 metres wide, covering about 72 hectares. It is enclosed by a wall about 8 metres high, with a watchtower at each corner, and by a moat 52 metres wide. It stands at the centre of a north–south axis running through the whole of old Beijing, expressing the idea of the emperor at the centre of the world.

The palace is divided into two parts. The Outer Court in the south, entered through the massive Meridian Gate (Wumen), contains three great ceremonial halls on a raised marble terrace, today called the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Central Harmony and the Hall of Preserving Harmony. Here emperors held audiences, enthronements and major ceremonies. The Inner Court to the north contains the residential palaces of the emperor, empress and consorts, together with gardens, shrines and offices, and is entered from the north by the Gate of Divine Prowess.

Colour and number carried meaning. Yellow glazed roof tiles were reserved for the emperor, red walls and columns symbolised good fortune, and decorative details often appear in odd numbers associated with yang, the masculine principle. The Chinese name Zijincheng, “Purple Forbidden City”, links the palace to the Pole Star, around which the heavens were believed to turn, just as the empire turned around the emperor.

Fires and rebuilding

Because the buildings were made of wood, fire was a constant danger. In May 1421, only months after the palace was inaugurated, lightning set fire to the three great halls of the Outer Court, which were not fully rebuilt until 1440. Further fires struck many times during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and most of the halls standing today date from Qing reconstructions, particularly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though they largely follow the Ming plan.

To fight fires, the palace was supplied with hundreds of large bronze and iron water vats placed in courtyards. Their water was kept from freezing in winter by small fires lit beneath them.

Life in the palace

The Forbidden City was a city in its own right. Besides the imperial family it housed thousands of eunuchs, palace women and guards, and it contained workshops, kitchens, storehouses, libraries and temples. Access was strictly controlled. Most officials entered only the Outer Court, and ordinary people could not enter at all.

Palace life could be dangerous as well as grand. In 1542 a group of palace women tried to strangle the Jiajing Emperor in his sleep; the plot failed, the women were executed, and the shaken emperor spent much of the rest of his reign in the Western Park outside the main palace. Later the Wanli Emperor, who reigned from 1572 to 1620, withdrew into the Inner Court and for years refused to hold regular audiences with his ministers, a withdrawal that historians link to the decline of Ming government.

In 1644 the rebel leader Li Zicheng captured Beijing, and the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, took his own life on Jingshan, the hill just north of the palace; see the fall of Beijing in 1644. Within weeks the Manchu Qing dynasty occupied the city and made the Forbidden City its own seat of power, keeping the Ming layout while renaming and rebuilding many halls. From the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor in the 1720s, the emperors lived and worked mainly in the Hall of Mental Cultivation in the Inner Court, while the great halls of the Outer Court were kept for state ceremonies. In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, the Empress Dowager Cixi fled the city and troops of the foreign allied armies occupied the palace grounds until the following year.

From palace to museum

After the Xinhai Revolution, the last emperor, Puyi, abdicated in February 1912. Under an agreement with the new republic he was allowed to keep living in the Inner Court, while the Outer Court passed to the state. In November 1924 he was expelled by the warlord Feng Yuxiang’s troops, and on 10 October 1925 the Palace Museum opened to the public.

During the war with Japan in the 1930s, many of the most valuable objects were packed into crates and moved south and west for safekeeping. Part of this collection was taken to Taiwan in 1948–1949 and is now held by the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The Forbidden City was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and the Palace Museum in Beijing holds a collection of more than 1.8 million objects.

Key people

• Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424): ordered the palace and moved the Ming capital to Beijing.
• Kuai Xiang (1398–1481): master carpenter traditionally credited with much of the design and construction.
• Ruan An (Nguyen An, died 1453): Vietnamese-born eunuch architect and engineer who worked on the palace and on Beijing’s city walls.
• Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627–1644): last Ming emperor to rule from the palace.
• Puyi (1906–1967): last emperor, who lived in the Inner Court until 1924.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: The palace has 9,999 and a half rooms. The story says that only Heaven could have 10,000 rooms, so the emperor stopped just short. Surveys have counted about 8,700 bays or room units, so the figure is a legend.

Myth: The whole palace is original Ming work. The plan and many foundations date from the Ming, but repeated fires mean that most of the main halls are Qing reconstructions.

Timeline

• 1403: Beiping is renamed Beijing.
• 1406: the Yongle Emperor orders the building of a new palace in Beijing.
• 1417–1420: main construction of the palace.
• 1421: Beijing becomes the Ming capital; in May lightning burns the three great halls.
• 1440: the great halls of the Outer Court are rebuilt.
• 1644: Li Zicheng takes Beijing; the Qing dynasty then occupies the palace.
• 1912, February: Puyi abdicates but keeps the Inner Court.
• 1924, November: Puyi is expelled from the palace.
• 1925, 10 October: the Palace Museum opens.
• 1987: the Forbidden City is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

The Forbidden City was the stage on which five centuries of Chinese imperial history were played out, from the reign of Yongle to the abdication of Puyi. Its design expresses traditional ideas about the emperor’s place between Heaven and Earth, and as the Palace Museum it now preserves one of the world’s great collections of Chinese art and history.