The Forbidden City (Palace Museum)

The Palace Museum is housed within the Forbidden City, an imperial palace originally completed in 1420 that served a succession of twenty-four Chinese emperors and their dynasties during the Ming and Qing periods of Chinese history. It is located in the center of Beijing, the capital city of China. The museum itself was established in October 10, 1925, and is China's largest museum.

Built from 1406 to 1420, the The Forbidden City complex consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 covering 720,000 square meters.  It is recognized by UNESCO as the site with the largest number of preserved wooden structures in the world.  The Mongol Yuan dynasty first constructed a palace on the site but it was ordered burned down by the Ming emperor Hongwu and the imperial captial was moved to Nanjing.  But the capital was moved back to Beijing by his son Zhu Di and a new palace was built on the same site as the previous palace.  Over a million workers labored on the new palace for 15 years, using Phoebe zhennan wood from the jungles of southwest China and marble from quarries near Beijing. 

"From 1420 to 1644, the Forbidden City was the seat of the Ming Dynasty. In April 1644, it was captured by rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, who proclaimed himself emperor of the Shun Dynasty. He soon fled before the combined armies of former Ming general Wu Sangui and Manchu forces, setting fire to parts of the Forbidden City in the process. By October, the Manchus had achieved supremacy in northern China, and a ceremony was held at the Forbidden City to proclaim the young Shunzhi Emperor as ruler of all China under the Qing Dynasty. The Qing rulers changed the names of the principal buildings, to emphasise "Harmony" rather than "Supremacy" made the name plates bilingual (Chinese and Manchu), and introduced Shamanist elements to the palace. In 1860, during the Second Opium War, Anglo-French forces took control of the Forbidden City and occupied it until the end of the war". - Wikipedia

It was finally abandoned as an imperial residence in 1900 when Empress Dowager Cixi fled from the Forbidden City during the Boxer Rebellion.

In addition to preserving the architecture of the palace and objects collected by the imperial family, many of the items now on display, the Museum also exhibits artwork representing over 8,000 years of Chinese civilization in its seven speciality galleries.

Pottery was developed in China during the Neolithic age some 8,000 years ago and examples of this period are displayed in the museum's pottery gallery.  Proto-porcelain items began to appear during the Shang Dynasty approximately 3,000 years ago while fully mature porcelain has been found dating to the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 -220 AD).  Examples of ceramics from the Neolithic all the way through the Qing dynasty may be viewed in this collection.

The Palace Museum houses over 15,000 pieces of bronze articles in its Bronze Gallery with 1600 items with inscriptions from the pre-Qin period alone.

The great bronze vessels began to appear in the late Xia Dynasty with vessels inscribed with lines and pictures (particularly animals) in the Shang Dynasty.  During the Dong Zhou period, bronze vessels were used in tomb burials and to record historical events and achievements of the deceased.

The Treasure Gallery houses items crafted of gold, silver, pearls, gems, jade and jadeite, including jewelry for the imperial family and furnishings for the palace as well as articles for daily use.  Some items in the collection were presented as tributes by princes, dukes and officials.

The Palace Museum has preserved thousands of paintings and displays some of them in their Painting Gallery.  Works displayed range from landscapes by Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, Ni Zan and Wang Meng, the four great masters of the Yuan dynasty, to portrait, landscape, and paintings of naturalistic flowers and birds from the Ming dynasty.

A Clock Gallery features sundials and clepsydra used before the Qing dynasty as well as mechanical timepieces first brought to the Qing court from England, France and Switzerland. Many of them were produced with moving figures, flowers, animals and birds, which delighted the imperial family - so much so that a clock factory was established within the imperial workshops during the reign of Emperor Yongzheng.  Of particular note in this collection are the night watches that combine the traditional Chinese 'Geng' (one of the five two-hour periods into which the night was formerly divided) with western 'hour' and 'minute' time-keeping mechanisms.

Cloisonne enamel and painted enamel were two types of metal-roughcast enamelware that were developed respectively at the end of the 13th century and at the beginning of the 17th century under the influence of foreign cultures. The enameled works, produced for the nobility rather than the common people, are exhibited in the Metal-Roughcast Enamelware Gallery in the museum.

Of course jade has been treasured for thousands of years and used to create spectacular artwork as well as ritual tomb objects used to promote immortality. Items selected from the museum's vast collection are showcased in the Jade Gallery.

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