Daming Palace was originally larger than the Forbidden City. Why are there few left now?

There were many palaces built in the Han Dynasty, among which Changle Palace, Weiyang Palace and Jianzhang Palace were the largest, and Changle Palace was fixed as the residence of the Empress Dowager. Weiyang Palace was the permanent residence of the Western Han emperors. Jianzhang Palace is the permanent residence of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty and Emperor Zhao of Han Dynasty.

Daming Palace is the main hall of the Tang Dynasty, and it is one of the three palaces in the Tang Dynasty (Daming Palace, Taiji Palace and Xingqing Palace). Among them, Daming Palace is the largest, with an area five times that of Bauhinia City in Beijing. It was the most luxurious and largest imperial capital in the world at that time, which influenced the architectural forms of many countries in the world at that time.

There are three key reasons why the size of palaces in the late Song, Ming and Qing Dynasties, especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, is different from that in the Han and Tang Dynasties. Not to mention anything too academic, it is simply:

1. The architectural thought, the geomantic theory of palace layout and the function of palaces in the Han and Tang Dynasties have been greatly different from those in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, so they are close in scale and quite different from those in the Han and Tang Dynasties.

2. In Han and Tang Dynasties, there were many wooden structures, but there were few masonry applications. Since the Ming Dynasty, brick-making techniques have developed greatly. In Ming and Qing Dynasties, masonry structures were widely used in buildings, and many beamless halls appeared, but they also developed a large space.

3. The architectural techniques in Ming and Qing Dynasties were more advanced and advanced than those in Han and Tang Dynasties, and the layout was more reasonable. Although the area was reduced, the usable area was very large. Compared with the palaces with the same construction area in Han and Tang Dynasties, the usable area was far more than that in Han and Tang Dynasties.

during the Han and Tang dynasties, the basic defense capability of the capital was the palace wall, which even contained a large number of internal security forces. However, Chang 'an in Tang Dynasty was even breached for nine times, and the palace was in the corner of the capital, and it was easy to expand to the side of farmland!

After the Song Dynasty, the layout of the imperial city was changed, and Miyagi was in the middle, and the defensive nature of the walls of Miyagi weakened ... All the tall walls of the capital were built, and even the citizens were protected, but in this way, Miyagi could not expand! But the emperors found another way. The imperial palaces in the Ming and Qing Dynasties stripped off many functions and found other places to build them: North Zhongnanhai, Family Temple, Heaven and Earth Altar, Summer Palace and Yuanmingyuan Garden ...