Forbidden City Trivia
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46 free Forbidden City trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 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 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 24 emperors who lived in the Forbidden City each bore which title of China's rulers?
Son of Heaven
Son of Heaven: fourteen Ming and ten Qing emperors ruled here as heaven's deputies, a claim with a catch, since a dynasty that fell was said to have lost heaven's mandate.
Q 02Before the court moved into the newly built Forbidden City in 1420, which city was the Ming capital?
Nanjing
Nanjing lost the court when a prince who had seized the throne from his nephew moved it to his own northern base, the better to watch the Mongol frontier.
Q 03Which Ming emperor, who sent Zheng He's fleets to sea, moved the capital to Beijing and began the Forbidden City?
Yongle
The Yongle Emperor had barely four years in his new palace: he spent much of his reign leading armies into Mongolia and died on campaign in 1424.
Q 04Which servants, numbering in the thousands, staffed the emperor's private quarters in the Forbidden City?
Eunuchs
Eunuchs were trusted to serve inside the emperor's household precisely because they could father no children there.
Q 05The 'golden bricks' paving the Forbidden City's great halls were made in which canal city?
Suzhou
Suzhou and its neighbouring prefectures baked the dense paving tiles from fine clay; despite the name, there is no gold in them.
Q 06The 'purple' in Zijincheng, the Forbidden City's Chinese name, points to which star, the celestial emperor's seat?
The North Star
The North Star, the Ziwei star, sat at the still centre of the turning sky and was held to be the celestial emperor's home, so his earthly counterpart's palace took its name.
Q 07What is the name of the northern gate of the Forbidden City?
The Gate of Divine Prowess
The Gate of Divine Prowess (Shenwumen) is the northern gate, facing Jingshan hill; it was originally the Gate of Black Warrior (Xuanwu), renamed to avoid the Kangxi Emperor's personal name.
Q 08Chinese speakers usually call the Forbidden City 'Gugong', a name that means what?
Former Palace
Former Palace: the name took over once the dynasty had fallen and the emperors' home had become a museum, the Gugong Bowuyuan.
Q 09In counts of the Forbidden City's fabled 9,999 rooms, what is one 'room'?
The space between four pillars
The space between four pillars is one bay, so a single great hall counts as dozens of 'rooms'; even so, surveys find fewer than 9,400, short of the legend.
Q 10Which rebel leader took the Forbidden City in April 1644 and declared himself Shun emperor?
Li Zicheng
Li Zicheng held the palace for barely forty days: beaten at Shanhai Pass by Qing and turncoat Ming armies, he set parts of it alight as he fled Beijing.
Q 11Which conquering people from the north-east enthroned a boy emperor in the Forbidden City in 1644?
The Manchus
The Manchus proclaimed the boy Shunzhi ruler of all China there, though real power lay with his uncle Dorgon, the regent whose army had just taken Beijing.
Q 12In which war did Lord Elgin, in 1860, reportedly weigh destroying the Forbidden City before burning the Old Summer Palace?
The Second Opium War
The Second Opium War brought Anglo-French troops to Beijing; the palace Elgin burned was the emperors' main residence, with the Forbidden City kept largely for ceremony.
Q 13Who was the final emperor to live in the Forbidden City?
Puyi
Q 21What is the name of the main southern entrance of the Forbidden City?
The Meridian Gate
The Meridian Gate was the palace's stage: from its tower imperial proclamations and each year's calendar were issued, and captives were paraded before the emperor after a victory.
Q 22Bronze lions guard the Forbidden City's gates in pairs; the male paws a ball, but what lies under the lioness's paw?
A cub
A cub lies under her paw, a sign of nurture and a thriving imperial line, while the male's ball stood for the emperor's sway over the world.
Q 23Besides the emperor, who could pass through the central arch of the Forbidden City's main southern gate?
New empresses and top scholars
Puyi abdicated as a small boy in 1912, yet the republic's terms let him keep his title and go on living in the Inner Court for another twelve years.
Q 14After his 1924 expulsion from the Forbidden City, the former emperor became a puppet ruler for which country?
Japan
Japan crowned him in 1934 over its client state in China's north-east; he had lost his palace home when a warlord's coup tore up the terms of his abdication.
Q 15The Palace Museum opened in the Forbidden City on 10 October 1925, the anniversary of which event?
The 1911 revolution
The 1911 revolution began with an army mutiny at Wuchang on 10 October, so the republic threw open the emperors' home to the public on its own national day.
Q 16The pick of the Forbidden City's art collection, shipped out in 1948, is now housed in which city?
Taipei
Taipei's National Palace Museum holds about a fifth of the 13,491 crates first packed off in 1933 as war threatened Beijing; the Nationalists shipped the best to Taiwan as they lost the civil war.
Q 17Who sent an army battalion to guard the Forbidden City during the Cultural Revolution?
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai, premier since 1949, sent an army battalion to guard the palace in 1966 as Red Guards attacked other heritage sites; its gates stayed sealed until 1971.
Q 18Roughly how far is it from the Forbidden City's south gate to its north gate?
1 kilometre
1 kilometre is close: the walls run 961 metres from south to north and 753 across, enclosing more ground than the whole of Vatican City.
Q 19Researchers link the two-degree tilt of the Forbidden City's axis to an alignment with which Mongol capital?
Xanadu
Xanadu, Shangdu in Chinese, was Kublai Khan's summer capital; the tilt goes back to the axis his dynasty laid out for Beijing, which the Ming palace inherited.
Q 20What is the emperor's seat in the Forbidden City's main throne hall traditionally called?
The Dragon Throne
The Dragon Throne looks like solid gold but is carved wood under gilt lacquer, with dragons coiling over its back and arms.
New empresses and top scholars each got one turn: a bride entered through it on her wedding day, and the three best graduates of the palace examination walked out by it.
Q 24The five bridges over the Forbidden City's Golden Water River are built of which stone?
White marble
White marble makes all five, set side by side over the stream's bow-shaped bend; they lead to the gate where Ming emperors sat to hear their officials' reports.
Q 25What is the largest building in the Forbidden City, used for enthronements and imperial weddings?
The Hall of Supreme Harmony
The Hall of Supreme Harmony was a stage, not an office: Qing emperors held court elsewhere and kept it for enthronements, weddings and the great festivals.
Q 26Legend says the ball hung above the Forbidden City's throne would do what to a usurper?
Fall and kill him
Fall and kill him, the tale ran; Yuan Shikai, who declared himself emperor in 1915, is said to have had the throne shifted back so the Xuanyuan Mirror no longer hung over it.
Q 27Which hall of the Forbidden City's Outer Court held the final stage of the Imperial Examination?
The Hall of Preserving Harmony
The Hall of Preserving Harmony was a banquet hall first; only in 1789 did the palace examination settle there, the one round whose questions the emperor set himself.
Q 28How was the Forbidden City's giant carved stone ramp probably hauled from its quarry?
On sledges over ice roads
On sledges over ice roads: a 2013 engineering study showed that a film of water on winter ice cut the friction enough to slide such blocks, the method used in place of log rollers.
Q 29Which Forbidden City building housed the Ming emperors and later became the Qing audience hall?
The Palace of Heavenly Purity
The Palace of Heavenly Purity lost its emperors to smaller quarters in the 1720s; after that emperors hid their secret choice of heir behind the tablet above its throne.
Q 30From the Yongzheng Emperor on, Qing emperors lived and worked in which smaller Forbidden City building?
The Hall of Mental Cultivation
The Hall of Mental Cultivation (Yangxindian), west of the main axis, became the emperors' home and office from Yongzheng's reign; Cixi later ruled from behind a screen in its eastern chamber.