As the heart of Imperial China from 1421 until 1912, the Forbidden City?a palatial complex in the center of Beijing?represented the divine authority of the Emperors of China for over five hundred years. Built by the Ming Emperor Zhu Di as the centerpiece of his ideal capital city, the palace would host twenty-four different emperors and two dynasties over the course of its history. Even after the subsequent democratic and communist revolutions that transformed China in the early 20th Century, it remains as the most prominent built relic of a cosmopolitan empire.[1]

The Forbidden City, Beijing. Image Courtesy of Wikimedia user pixelflake (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

As the heart of Imperial China from 1421 until 1912, the Forbidden City?a palatial complex in the center of Beijing?represented the divine authority of the Emperors of China for over five hundred years. Built by the Ming Emperor Zhu Di as the centerpiece of his ideal capital city, the palace would host twenty-four different emperors and two dynasties over the course of its history. Even after the subsequent democratic and communist revolutions that transformed China in the early 20th Century, it remains as the most prominent built relic of a cosmopolitan empire.[1]
For a millennium, the city of Beijing has served as the capital several empires and dynasties.[2] At the beginning of the 15th Century, however, it was a comparatively ...