Forbidden City

The emperor's palace with 9,999 rooms

For 500 years China's emperors lived in this palace, and ordinary people were forbidden to enter — hence the 'Forbidden City'. It is the largest palace in the world: 980 buildings, about 9,000 rooms, 72 hectares (100 football pitches). The roofs are yellow — a colour reserved for the emperor alone. The walls are 10 m high, with a moat all around. Today it is a museum visited by 17 million people a year.

The Forbidden City (Gugong) was built in 1406–1420 by the Ming emperor Yongle (1 million labourers, 100,000 craftsmen) and housed 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties from 1420 to 1912. 961 × 753 m, 72 ha, 980 buildings, 8,707 rooms (the legendary 9,999 is one fewer than the 10,000 of the heavenly palace); the largest surviving wooden architectural complex in the world. Layout: the Outer Court (Hall of Supreme Harmony with the throne, 35 m) and the Inner Court (the emperor's family, harem, eunuchs). Feng shui: a north–south axis, 5 bridges, and 9 as the imperial number (9 figurines on the roofs). Yellow glazed tiles, red walls. Wooden columns of Sichuan nanmu, marble from Fangshan (dragged along ice roads in winter). Palace Museum since 1925, with 1.8 million objects (some taken to Taiwan in 1949). UNESCO since 1987. 'The Last Emperor' (1987) was filmed here.

Fun facts

• The palace has 8,707 rooms — sleeping in each once would take 24 years.
• Yellow roofs were allowed only for the emperor — no one else.
• Giant marble slabs were dragged 28 km along ice roads in winter.