50 Fun Facts About Forbidden City

How many Ming and Qing emperors lived in the Forbidden City?

That is 14 Ming emperors and 10 Qing.

In which year was construction of the Forbidden City completed?

Work had begun in 1406 and took 14 years and a vast workforce.

Which Ming emperor moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing and began building the Forbidden City?

He was Zhu Di, son of the dynasty's founder.

Roughly how many workers were needed to build the Forbidden City?

They used whole logs of precious nanmu wood from south-western jungles and marble from quarries near Beijing.

The 'golden bricks' paving the floors of the major halls were specially baked in which city?

The name is 'jinzhuan' in Chinese; the wood came from the jungles of the south-west.

The 'purple' in the Chinese name Zijincheng refers to what?

The Ziwei star was the heavenly home of the Jade Emperor; the palace was its earthly counterpart.

What was the punishment for entering the Forbidden City without authorisation?

Access was limited to the emperor, his family and their eunuch servants.

By what name is the site most commonly known in modern Chinese?

It means 'Former Palace', and the museum inside is the Palace Museum.

According to legend the palace has 9,999 rooms. How many bays of rooms have surveys actually counted?

There are 980 surviving buildings covering 72 hectares.

In which year did UNESCO list the Forbidden City as a World Heritage Site?

It is registered as the 'Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties'.

How many visitors did the Forbidden City receive in 2019?

Since 2012 the average has been around 14 million a year.

Which rebel leader took the Forbidden City in April 1644 and declared himself Shun emperor?

He soon fled the combined Ming-turncoat and Manchu armies, setting fire to parts of the palace as he went.

Which young emperor was proclaimed ruler of all China at the Forbidden City in October 1644?

The Manchus renamed buildings to stress 'harmony' over 'supremacy' and made the nameplates bilingual.

During which conflict did Anglo-French forces occupy the Forbidden City in 1860?

Forty years later Empress Dowager Cixi fled and the treaty powers occupied it again.

Which uprising in 1900 caused Empress Dowager Cixi to flee the Forbidden City?

Foreign forces then occupied the palace until the following year.

Who was the final emperor to live in the Forbidden City?

He abdicated in 1912 but stayed in the Inner Court until a coup evicted him twelve years later.

In which year was the last emperor evicted from the palace, ending 500 years as an imperial residence?

The republican forces that expelled him were led by Feng Yuxiang; the Palace Museum opened the next year.

In which year was the Palace Museum established inside the Forbidden City?

Its collection is built on the imperial holdings of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The finest part of the palace collection, evacuated in 1948, is now a museum in which city?

Of 13,491 boxes evacuated from the Japanese in the 1930s, 2,972 ended up in Taiwan on Chiang Kai-shek's orders.

Which premier sent an army battalion to guard the Forbidden City during the Cultural Revolution?

Earlier plans had even proposed demolishing the complex to house the new Communist government.

How long is the Forbidden City from north to south?

It is 753 metres wide, and its central axis is the central axis of Beijing itself.

The palace's central axis is slightly off true north; researchers think it was aligned with which city?

The alignment dates from the Yuan dynasty, whose emperors kept a second capital there.

How wide is the moat surrounding the Forbidden City?

It is six metres deep, and the walls inside it rise 7.9 metres.

What is the name of the main southern entrance of the Forbidden City?

It has two protruding wings and five gateways, the central one reserved for the emperor's Imperial Way.

Which palace gate has only eight rows of golden door nails instead of nine?

Nine was the emperor's number; the palace's most important hall is nine bays wide and five deep.

Apart from the emperor, who was allowed to use the central Imperial Way through the main southern gate?

The stone-flagged path runs along the whole central axis of old Beijing.

How many bridges cross the Inner Golden Water River in the square inside the main southern gate?

Their cloud-shaped balustrades were meant to evoke the emperor's celestial lineage.

What is the largest building in the Forbidden City, used for enthronements and imperial weddings?

It is the largest surviving wooden structure in China and rises about 30 metres above its square.

What is the set of metal balls hanging from the ceiling dragon in the largest hall called?

The coiled dragon sits in an intricate caisson at the very centre of the ceiling.

The final stage of the Imperial Examination was held in which building of the Outer Court?

It was otherwise used for rehearsing ceremonies.

How was the 200-ton carved stone ramp behind the northernmost of the three great halls probably transported?

It is a single stone 16.57 metres long, the largest such carving in China.

In the Inner Court, which building was the Ming emperors' residence, later used as the audience hall?

A tablet reading 'Justice and Honour' hangs above its throne.

From the Yongzheng Emperor onwards, Qing emperors actually lived and worked in which smaller building?

Cixi and other empresses dowager later held court from behind a screen in its eastern partition.

What is stored in the Hall of Union, between the emperor's and empress's palaces?

The square hall with its pyramidal roof was where yin and yang were said to mix into harmony.

How many consorts' palaces lay west of the Inner Court's main halls, matched by the same number east?

Cixi lived in a western one and was called the 'western empress'; her co-regent Ci'an was the 'eastern empress'.

Which emperor built the Forbidden City's Palace of Tranquil Longevity as a retirement complex?

It mirrors the layout of the whole Forbidden City with its own outer court, inner court and gardens.

What colour are almost all the roof tiles in the Forbidden City?

It was the emperor's colour; the library got black tiles for water and the crown prince green tiles for growth.

Why does the library at the Pavilion of Literary Profundity have black roof tiles?

The crown prince's residences got green tiles because green meant wood and growth.

How many roof statuettes top the largest hall, more than any other imperial building was allowed?

The tenth figure, the 'Hangshi', is unique; minor buildings might have three or five.

The main halls are arranged in groups of three to echo which trigram, representing Heaven?

The residences of the Inner Court come in clusters of six, the shape of the Kun trigram for Earth.

The artificial hill of Jingshan Park, north of the palace, was made from what?

It is also known as Prospect Hill.

The former royal garden of Zhongnanhai, west of the palace, now serves as what?

It is centred on two connected lakes.

Whose portrait hangs at the centre of Tiananmen Gate, south of the palace?

It is flanked by placards wishing long life to the People's Republic and to the unity of the world's peoples.

According to its 2016 audit, roughly how many pieces of art does the Palace Museum hold?

That includes 340,000 ceramics, close to 50,000 paintings and about 30,000 jades.

Which country supplied most of the Palace Museum's 1,000-plus mechanical timepieces?

Chinese pieces came from the palace's own workshops.

Which Bertolucci film was the first feature authorised to shoot inside the Forbidden City?

After the World Heritage listing that year, most period films moved to a full-size replica at Hengdian World Studios.

A large filming replica of the Forbidden City stands at Hengdian World Studios in which province?

Filming inside the real palace was restricted after the World Heritage listing for fear of damage.

UNESCO recognises the Forbidden City as the world's largest collection of what?

China put it on its first list of national priority protected sites in 1961.

Whole logs of which precious wood, hauled from south-western jungles, were used to build the palace?

Large marble blocks came from quarries near Beijing, and the great halls were floored with 'golden bricks' baked in Suzhou.

How high is the city wall that surrounds the Forbidden City?

The rammed-earth walls are 8.62 m wide at the base and taper to 6.66 m at the top, doubling as retaining walls for the palace.