What are the layout features of the Forbidden City?
The Palace Museum is arranged along a north-south central axis, and the three main halls, the last three palaces and the imperial garden are all located on this central axis. And spread to both sides, straight from north to south, symmetrical left and right. This central axis not only runs through the Forbidden City, but also runs through the city from Yongdingmen in the south to the Drum Tower and Bell Tower in the north.
Today, the working people's cultural palace in front of the Forbidden City is the ancestral temple of the Ming and Qing emperors. On the right front, Zhongshan Park is the social altar where the emperor worships the land gods and the valley gods. There is a courtier's office in front; There is a market for people to trade in the back.
Extended data:
The layout of the imperial palace in the Ming Dynasty was neat and serious, symmetrical from left to right, echoing back and forth, overlapping up and down, and the pattern was rigorous. Generally speaking, it is to highlight a theme-the supremacy of the monarch, and its strictness, luxury, nobility and neatness are all to express this theme.
In the feudal society of China, the imperial courts of Zhou, Han, Tang and Song all showed the strictness of "the door of the monarch is heavy" and the supreme spirit of "the land of the king and the land of the king's ministers".
After China entered the feudal society, it was a centralized and unified country. In the course of historical development, there have also been splits and separatist regimes, but the general trend is centralization and unification. In the Ming dynasty in the late feudal society, the situation of centralization was more prominent.
After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in the 13th year of Hongwu, and set up five governments and nine ministers, and divided the government. He seems to have learned a historical lesson from the power adultery in the Southern Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty, and strictly ordered his men not to form a party for personal gain.
He not only removed the post of prime minister, but also abolished the chief executives of the provinces to supervise the various regions of the imperial governor. At the same time, six administrative powers, namely, official, household, industrial, ceremonial, military and criminal powers, were added to control the autocratic power in the hands of the emperor and form a monarchy. This ideology and political system is also reflected in the layout of the palace, which has become the theme of palace architecture in the Ming Dynasty.
No matter how the capital changed in the early Ming Dynasty, the rules of the imperial palace were always inherited, and they were constantly revised and obtained. From the first year of Wu (1367), when Liu Ji and others designed Wu Palace, they determined this plan. For example, in the first year of Wu Dynasty, the main hall was called Fengtian Hall, with Fengtianmen in front and Shenshen Hall in the back, with cloisters on both sides.
There are buildings around Fengtian Temple, with Wenyue Building on the left and Yuewu Building on the right. There is a palace behind the house, the former is called Gan Qing Palace, the latter is called Kunning Palace, and the sixth palace is in the next stage; Zhou is the imperial city, with the gate, the meridian gate in the south, Donghua in the east, Xihua in the west and Xuanwu in the north.
This shows that the scale of the three halls and two palaces was determined from the beginning. By the time the construction of Zhongdu Fengyang Project was stopped and Nanjing Palace was rebuilt in the ninth year of Hongwu, the system remained the same and the scale was favorable.
In this reconstruction, the "two views" with prominent wings were added to the Wumen Gate, and two side doors and left and right shun doors were added to the left and right of Fengtianmen and Fengtiandian.
In addition, two halls, Wenhua Hall and Wuying Hall, have been added. It is particularly important to put the national altar and ancestral temple on the left and right sides of the palace meridian gate. This is much closer than the Forbidden City in Beijing today.
Beijing Palace was built for the fourth time in the early Ming Dynasty. It is based on Nanjing Palace, but to be exact, it is a summary of the previous three construction experiences. Although the building of the Forbidden City in Beijing is the same as before, it is actually the sum of the three previous palace constructions, and it has been excavated, so it has stronger planning and more complete layout.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Beijing Forbidden City