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T h e F o r b i d d e n C i t y |
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The Forbidden City is located at the very center of the ancient city of Beijing. Zhu Di, the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, ordered it built when he decided to move the capital of his empire from Nanjing to Beijing. Zhu Di presided over its construction from 1406 to 1420. It has been estimated that three million people participated in the construction, many of them forced. Central in the Forbidden City was the imperial palace for the emperors of the Ming Dynasty after Zhu Di and all the emperors of the Qing Dynasty. Being the place where the emperors resided and carried out affairs of the state, the "city" was forbidden to ordinary citizens, until after the Qing Dynasty ended in 1911. The Forbidden City covers a ground of 720,000 square meters, and in it were 800 buildings and 9,999 rooms. It is listed by the UNESCO of the United Nations as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world, and was designated a World Heritage Site in 1987 as the "Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties". The palace ground is located directly to the north of Tiananmen Square and is accessible from the square via Tiananmen (or Tianan Gate). Today the Forbidden City houses the Palace Museum. Although no longer occupied by royalty, the Forbidden City, along with the Great Wall, remains a symbol of China. It is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world. It is the same emperor, Zhu Di, under whose reign admiral Zheng He led his fleet to explore the world in seven voyages between 1405 and 1433. Some believe that the fleet reached Americas, decades before Columbus. |