The Forbidden City (Palace Museum): Gates, Axis and Galleries

Built between 1406 and 1420 under the Ming Yongle Emperor and home to twenty-four Ming and Qing rulers until 1912, the Forbidden City (Palace Museum, or Gugong) is the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth. Surrounded by a fifty-two-metre-wide moat and ten-metre vermilion walls with four intricate corner towers, the ninety-eight-hectare precinct works strictly as a south-to-north one-way walk. Note that the palace closes on Mondays outside statutory national holidays, and tickets must be reserved online against your passport number roughly a week ahead (see our practical overview).

Approaching Meridian Gate (Wumen)

All visitors enter through the southern Meridian Gate and exit through the northern Gate of Divine Might (Shenwumen) opposite Jingshan Park. Rather than queueing at the central Tiananmen Square checkpoints, a calmer approach is walking from Donghuamen (reached from Wangfujing or Goldfish Hutong Station on Line 8) along the shaded eastern moat wall straight to the Meridian Gate ticket scanners, where your physical passport is swiped for entry.

The Outer Court and Inner Court axis

Crossing the five carved white marble bridges over the Golden Water River brings you through the Gate of Supreme Harmony into the vast flagstone plaza of the Outer Court, where three ceremonial halls rise atop a three-tiered marble terrace:

• Hall of Supreme Harmony (Taihedian): the grandest wooden structure in China, where emperors ascended the dragon throne for enthronements, imperial weddings and winter solstice ceremonies beneath sets of gilded roof-ridge beasts.
• Hall of Central Harmony and Hall of Preserving Harmony: the emperor's resting chamber and the hall used for imperial banquets and the final stage of the palace civil service examinations; walk behind the third hall to see the monumental Large Stone Carving, a single slab of Fangshan marble carved with nine dragons among clouds and waves.
• The Inner Court (Palace of Heavenly Purity to the Imperial Garden): beyond the Gate of Heavenly Purity lie the residential halls of the emperor and empress, ending among ancient cypresses, bronze incense burners and Taihu scholar rocks in the Imperial Garden.

Side palaces, Treasure Gallery and Clock Gallery

While tour groups march straight down the Central Axis, turn east and west into the Six Western and Six Eastern Palaces to see furnished living quarters such as Changchungong and Chuxiu Palace. Reserve the supplementary ticket for the Treasure Gallery in the Palace of Tranquil Longevity subgroup, which opens with the glazed Nine-Dragon Screen and displays kingfisher-feather hairpins, carved jade mountains and gold ritual vessels, alongside the Clock Gallery inside Fengxian Hall.