One, the Forbidden City

The Forbidden City, also known as the Forbidden City, is the Ming and Qing dynasties of the Imperial Palace, known as the world's unrivaled architectural masterpiece, compared to France's Palace of Versailles, the United Kingdom's Buckingham Palace, the United States of America, as well as Russia's Kremlin is better than the Kremlin, is known as the "world's top five palaces".

The Forbidden City was built in 1406 and completed in 1420. This is the world's most magnificent palace complex, 961 meters long north-south, 753 meters wide east-west, with a floor area of 155,000 square meters, there are more than 90 large and small courtyards, houses 980. Superior timber, glazed tile roof, green and white stone seat and a variety of brilliant colorful paintings, showing the Palace of the rich and powerful.

Noon Gate, Donghuamen, Xihuamen, Shenwumen divided into guarding the Forbidden City in the four directions of the southeast, northwest and north, and Shenwumen opposite, is made of soil, stone park - Jingshan Park, which is full of pines and cypresses, a symbol of the everlasting green.

The Qianqing Gate as the boundary, in the Forbidden City, the "outer court" and "inner court" two parts of the architectural style is very different. The outer court to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, in the Hall of Peace, the Hall of Baohe as the center, is the place where the emperor held a meeting, also known as the "former dynasty"; the inner court to the Palace of the Qing dynasty, the Hall of Crossing, the Kunning Palace as the center, is the emperor's residence with the consort.

Second, the Forbidden City building

In order to answer the question of "the Forbidden City buildings in detail", I deliberately found the famous architect Mr. Lin Huiyin wrote the article "the Forbidden City", which is included in Mr. Lin Huiyin's book of "General Knowledge of China's Architecture" (published by Tien-Di Publishing House in 2019).

Lin Huiyin (1904-1955) was a famous poet, writer, and architect in modern China, and was regarded as a "talented woman of her generation". She was one of the designers of the Monument to the People's Heroes and the deepening of the national emblem of the People's Republic of China, and in the early 1930s, together with her husband, Liang Sicheng, she pioneered the study of ancient Chinese architecture by using modern scientific methods, which led to great academic achievements and laid a solid scientific foundation for the study of ancient Chinese architecture. In literature, Lin Huiyin wrote a lot in her life, including essays, poems, novels, plays, translations and letters.

The following is taken from Mr. Lin Huiyin's essay "The Forbidden City", which gives a detailed and authoritative description and explanation of the architecture of the Forbidden City--

The Forbidden City in Beijing is now the Palace Museum in the capital. The building of the Forbidden City itself is the most important historical artifact in this museum. Its combined formal magnificence, engineering perfection, and stately order of layout make it the finest and most splendid set of architectural monuments in the world.

The Palace consists of two major parts, namely, the "Front Court" and the "Inner Court"; surrounded by a wall, under which is a week of moat, with corner towers at the corners of the city, and a gate on each of the four sides: south of the Wudong Gate, with the magnificent gate tower known as the Five Phoenixes; north of the gate is known as the Shenwu Gate; the east and west of the gate is known as the Donghuamen, and the west of the gate is known as the West Gate. Two gates called Donghuamen, Xihuamen, the whole group collectively referred to as the "Forbidden City". Across the river looking at the red walls, yellow tiles, palace, corner of any corner of the tower is magnificent and beautiful, the weather.

The three halls in the center of the former dynasty is the focus of the former part of the Palace, the steps of the three layers of the ah, the structure of the sublime, for the masterpiece of architectural design. On the east side is the Hall of Wenhua, on the west side is the Hall of Wuying, these two groups and Taihe Gate east and west side by side, left and right set off, constituting the pattern of the front of the three halls.

The inner court was the part where the feudal emperor and his family lived and worked. Because it is the so-called emperor living place, so borrowed a lot of strict deployment of the pattern and the appearance of the formal treatment to emphasize the "supremacy" of the dictator. Therefore, the layout of the inner court is still using the left and right symmetrical format, and in the deployment of the symbols of the stars in the sky and so on. For example, in the middle of the inner court, qianqing, kuning two palaces is a symbol of heaven and earth, the middle of the hall name jiaotai, take "heaven and earth jiaotai" meaning. Qianqing Palace in front of the east and west of the two gates named Rixing, Yuehua, symbolizing the sun and the moon. Behind the Imperial Garden in the northernmost hall - Chin'an Hall, also enshrined in the "Xuan Tian God" tablets. The Palace Museum said this part for the "middle". It is also the continuation of the central axis of the former King's Hall, which is also a section of the city's central axis.

"Middle Road" on both sides of the two long entrances to the east and west, each of the six palaces, every three for all the way, the middle of the north and south entrances. These twelve palaces symbolize the twelve stars. They have five side by side after each side of the courtyard, said the east five, west five, also symbolizes the meaning of the stars. Twelve Palace is the Palace dependents "concubines" "Prince" and other residences and the middle of the "after three halls" is the core of the second half of the Forbidden City. Now the museum said the east and west of the six palaces for the "East Hall" and "West Hall", open on a rotating basis by day. West six palaces had been remodeled, storage show and Yikun two palaces between the addition of a hall, into a group. Changchun and Taiji, also added a hall, become a group, the pattern has changed slightly. East of the six palaces in the Jubilee, had considered the Western-style remodeling "Crystal Palace" and not yet.

Three roads outside the building is relatively irregular. There are two main: one is on both sides of the central axis, east and west of the southern end of the two roads, twelve palaces in front of the important palace. West is a group of Yangxindian, it is "outside" and "inner court" between the position of the east, is the feudal lord actually daily living place. East of the central axis and it is about symmetrical Palace and the Palace of Jaigong and Fengxian. The relationship between these two groups and the Qianqing Palace is equivalent to the Mandarin, Wuying two halls and the relationship between the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Another category is the core periphery of the larger scale than the Palace of the twelve palaces. These palaces were built to house the mothers and queens of the feudal lords. Each group has a front hall, a back bedchamber, surrounding corridors, supporting halls, and palace gates. To the west are the palaces of Ci Ning, Shou Kang and Shou An. Sandwiched between a group of Buddhist temples Yuhua Pavilion, a very large scale. General known as "outside the West Road". East of the "outer east road" only straight string north and south, a huge range of Ning Shou Palace group. It was originally Xuan Ye (Kangxi) mother lived, and later Hongli (Qianlong) will be handed over to his son. Retirement of their own old live here had added many more elaborate and skillful pavilion garden building, so called "Qianlong garden". It is the core of the rear of the Palace outside the most special and most extravagant of a group of buildings, and is the Qing dynasty is becoming more and more tedious palace fun masterpiece.

The rear of the Forbidden City, although "thousands of doors and ten thousand households", dense buildings, but they are still orderly layout. Beyond the central axis, the buildings on the east and west sides are also based on several north-south axis. The streets outside of the building clusters along the axes form long, thin north-south mezzanines. At the southern end of the main East First Street and West First Street are the "Left Inner Gate" and "Right Inner Gate" leading to the outer court, which were the main transportation routes between the inner court and the former court.

In addition to these "Palace" and "Hall" in addition, the Forbidden City, there are many service units such as the team of the House, the Imperial House of Food and a variety of warehouses and guards on duty. But the prestigious "South Study Room" and "Office of military affairs" and other prime ministers and ministers of the Office of the place, in fact, just a few rooms next to the Qianqing Gate of the corridor. The Military and Political Office is not as good as a row of stables in the upper team courtyard! Feudal emperors cruelly forced the laboring people to build palaces for him, pampered, enjoyment and ostentation of everything, and even his military ministers are still treated as slaves. This kind of fact can be reflected by the architecture and layout of the Forbidden City. All the buildings of the Forbidden City is also the richest historical material.