50 free Forbidden City trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Forbidden City trivia is about the biggest palace on Earth: 72 hectares of yellow-tiled halls in the exact centre of Beijing, home to 24 Ming and Qing emperors from 1420 until the last one was thrown out in 1924. Its name comes from the purple North Star and the fact that walking in uninvited got you executed. Its rooms are said to number 9,999, which is a myth, and its wooden buildings are, according to UNESCO, the largest collection of preserved ancient timber structures anywhere. This quiz covers the Yongle Emperor's move from Nanjing and the million-strong workforce, the nanmu logs and Suzhou 'golden bricks', the moat and the corner towers, the Meridian Gate and the Imperial Way, the three great halls of the Outer Court, the Xuanyuan Mirror, the 200-ton carved ramp dragged in on ice, the Inner Court, the Hall of Mental Cultivation and Cixi, the twelve consorts' palaces, the Nine Dragons Screen, roof statuettes and trigrams, Li Zicheng and the Manchus, the Boxer occupation, Puyi, the treasures shipped to Taipei, Zhou Enlai's guard battalion, the 1987 World Heritage listing, and Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen a photo of Tiananmen; the expert tier assumes you know which gate has only eight rows of door nails. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the Forbidden City, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many Ming and Qing emperors lived in the Forbidden City?
24
That is 14 Ming emperors and 10 Qing.
Q 02In which year was construction of the Forbidden City completed?
1420
Work had begun in 1406 and took 14 years and a vast workforce.
Q 03Which Ming emperor moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing and began building the Forbidden City?
Yongle
He was Zhu Di, son of the dynasty's founder.
Q 04Roughly how many workers were needed to build the Forbidden City?
More than a million
They used whole logs of precious nanmu wood from south-western jungles and marble from quarries near Beijing.
Q 05The 'golden bricks' paving the floors of the major halls were specially baked in which city?
Suzhou
The name is 'jinzhuan' in Chinese; the wood came from the jungles of the south-west.
Q 06The 'purple' in the Chinese name Zijincheng refers to what?
The North Star
The Ziwei star was the heavenly home of the Jade Emperor; the palace was its earthly counterpart.
Q 07What was the punishment for entering the Forbidden City without authorisation?
Immediate execution
Access was limited to the emperor, his family and their eunuch servants.
Q 08By what name is the site most commonly known in modern Chinese?
Gugong
It means 'Former Palace', and the museum inside is the Palace Museum.
Q 09According to legend the palace has 9,999 rooms. How many bays of rooms have surveys actually counted?
8,886
There are 980 surviving buildings covering 72 hectares.
Q 10In which year did UNESCO list the Forbidden City as a World Heritage Site?
1987
It is registered as the 'Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties'.
Q 11How many visitors did the Forbidden City receive in 2019?
More than 19 million
Since 2012 the average has been around 14 million a year.
Q 12Which rebel leader took the Forbidden City in April 1644 and declared himself Shun emperor?
Li Zicheng
He soon fled the combined Ming-turncoat and Manchu armies, setting fire to parts of the palace as he went.
Q 13Which young emperor was proclaimed ruler of all China at the Forbidden City in October 1644?
Shunzhi
The Manchus renamed buildings to stress 'harmony' over 'supremacy' and made the nameplates bilingual.
Q 21How long is the Forbidden City from north to south?
961 m
It is 753 metres wide, and its central axis is the central axis of Beijing itself.
Q 22The palace's central axis is slightly off true north; researchers think it was aligned with which city?
Shangdu
The alignment dates from the Yuan dynasty, whose emperors kept a second capital there.
Q 23How wide is the moat surrounding the Forbidden City?
52 m
It is six metres deep, and the walls inside it rise 7.9 metres.
Q 24What is the name of the main southern entrance of the Forbidden City?
Q 14During which conflict did Anglo-French forces occupy the Forbidden City in 1860?
The Second Opium War
Forty years later Empress Dowager Cixi fled and the treaty powers occupied it again.
Q 15Which uprising in 1900 caused Empress Dowager Cixi to flee the Forbidden City?
The Boxer Rebellion
Foreign forces then occupied the palace until the following year.
Q 16Who was the final emperor to live in the Forbidden City?
Puyi
He abdicated in 1912 but stayed in the Inner Court until a coup evicted him twelve years later.
Q 17In which year was the last emperor evicted from the palace, ending 500 years as an imperial residence?
1924
The republican forces that expelled him were led by Feng Yuxiang; the Palace Museum opened the next year.
Q 18In which year was the Palace Museum established inside the Forbidden City?
1925
Its collection is built on the imperial holdings of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Q 19The finest part of the palace collection, evacuated in 1948, is now a museum in which city?
Taipei
Of 13,491 boxes evacuated from the Japanese in the 1930s, 2,972 ended up in Taiwan on Chiang Kai-shek's orders.
Q 20Which premier sent an army battalion to guard the Forbidden City during the Cultural Revolution?
Zhou Enlai
Earlier plans had even proposed demolishing the complex to house the new Communist government.
The Meridian Gate
It has two protruding wings and five gateways, the central one reserved for the emperor's Imperial Way.
Q 25Which palace gate has only eight rows of golden door nails instead of nine?
The East Glorious Gate
Nine was the emperor's number; the palace's most important hall is nine bays wide and five deep.
Q 26Apart from the emperor, who was allowed to use the central Imperial Way through the main southern gate?
A new empress and top exam graduates
The stone-flagged path runs along the whole central axis of old Beijing.
Q 27How many bridges cross the Inner Golden Water River in the square inside the main southern gate?
5
Their cloud-shaped balustrades were meant to evoke the emperor's celestial lineage.
Q 28What is the largest building in the Forbidden City, used for enthronements and imperial weddings?
The Hall of Supreme Harmony
It is the largest surviving wooden structure in China and rises about 30 metres above its square.
Q 29What is the set of metal balls hanging from the ceiling dragon in the largest hall called?
The Xuanyuan Mirror
The coiled dragon sits in an intricate caisson at the very centre of the ceiling.
Q 30The final stage of the Imperial Examination was held in which building of the Outer Court?
The Hall of Preserving Harmony
It was otherwise used for rehearsing ceremonies.