BEIJING：Tiananmen Square + Forbidden City / 北京：天安门广场 + 故宫

TIANANMEN SQUARE / 天安门广场

Located at the center of Beijing City is Tiananmen Square. It is the largest city square in the world, occupying an area of 440,000 square meters, and is able to accommodate almost 1 million people at one time.

With the towering Monument to the People's Heroes at the center, Tiananmen Square has the magnificent Tiananmen Tower in the north, the solemn Mao Zedong Memorial Hall in the south (where the remains of Mao Zedong are laid in a crystal coffin), the National Museum of China in the east and the Great Hall of the People in the west. 

THE FORBIDDEN CITY / 故宫

The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, and for almost five hundred years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government.

It is the world's largest surviving palace complex and was designed to be the centre of the ancient, walled city of Beijing. The complex consists of 980 buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 m2. The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere.

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We enter through the Gate of Supreme Harmony and the most visible palaces we visited were from the outer court south. These are the Hall of Supreme Harmony (太和殿), the Hall of Central Harmony (中和殿), and the Hall of Preserving Harmony (保和殿). We also visited the museum, which is based in these buildings, known as the Palace Museum (故宫博物院)。

Inside the Forbidden City

 Credits:  Alung & wikipedia