The Forbidden City was the heart of China for over 500 years. It is a place of mystery, dragons, and ancient secrets. Here are the top 10 things every young historian should know!
From the year 1420 until 1912, the Forbidden City was the home of 24 different Emperors—14 from the Ming Dynasty and 10 from the Qing Dynasty.
It took over 1,000,000 workers 14 years to build the palace. They used precious materials like "golden" bricks and logs from giant Phoebe zhennan trees.
Legend says there are 9,999.5 rooms in the palace because only Heaven could have 10,000. In reality, there are about 8,707 modern rooms.
You can find thousands of dragons throughout the palace. They are carved into the stairs, painted on the ceilings, and sat on the roofs to protect the Emperor.
Yellow was the color of the Emperor. Almost every roof in the palace uses yellow glazed tiles. If you weren't the Emperor, using this color was a crime!
The massive wooden buildings were built using a special interlocking system called Dougong. Not a single metal nail was used to hold the main structures together.
The palace is surrounded by a moat that is 52 meters wide and 6 meters deep. It helped keep the Emperor safe from invaders.
It was called the "Forbidden" City because ordinary people were not allowed to enter. If you entered without permission, you could be punished severely!
In the summer, servants would bring huge blocks of ice from special "ice houses" and place them in bronze chests to cool down the Emperor's rooms.
The Forbidden City covers 720,000 square meters. It is the largest palatial complex in the world and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.