The Forbidden City is located in Beijing, China. The palace is made up of over 900 buildings and the grounds include gardens, series of gates, marble bridges, temples, political meeting rooms and much more (Morel 18). The city has an approximate area of 720,000 square meters and is entirely enclosed by a wall measuring 10 meters in height (Zhigang 7). The entire structure is amazing and is basically a city built within a city! Looking at the structure as a whole, it appears that the city is built symmetrically and seems to have overall balanced look and feeling. “The middle part of the palace is the largest and tallest, with the rest of the architectural structures extending out symmetrically from the central axis to form a unified completeness” (Zhigang 7). According to Morel, the palace was built with the buildings facing the south to promote the positive principles of the yin and yang in Chinese culture. It is amazing to think that so much hard work and planning went into the palace to ensure a balanced living space, or what the Chinese refer to as fengshui.
Yang, Zhigang. Beijing's Imperial Palace: The Illustrated
Guide to the Architecture, History, and Splendor of the Forbidden City.
Pleasantville, N.Y: Reader's Digest Association, 2010. Print.
Béguin, Gilles, and Dominique Morel. The Forbidden City:
Center of Imperial China. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1997. Print.