The Imperial Palace is located in the city center of Beijing and is also called the Forbidden City. As the imperial palaces in Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were totally 24 emperors ever lived in the Imperial Palace. At present, it is protected as the Palace Museum. The whole architecture of the Imperial Palace is resplendent and magnificent, solemn and gorgeous, wining the reputation of one of the five palaces in the world. Students who are learning Mandarin Chinese may know the other four palaces are Versailles Palace in France, Buckingham Palace in England, the White House in the US and the Kremlin Palace in Russia. It is also entitled as the World Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO.

The palace architecture of the Imperial Palace is the largest ancient architecture complex preserved the most complete in China, covering an area of more than 720 thousand square meters. Since there are totally 9999 and a half halls and rooms, it is also reputed as the sea of houses, magnificent and spectacular. It can be called an incomparable masterpiece no matter in the plane layout and the vertical effect or the majestic halls in form.

The whole Imperial Palace is crossed by an axis which is overlapped on the axis of Beijing city. The three main halls, three palaces and the imperial garden are all along this axis. On both sides of the palaces in the axis, many halls are also distributed, all of which are magnificent and gorgeous. If you have visited the Imperial Palace when you attend to volunteer programs in China, you might have found that those small places are all made up of two parts, the outer palace and the imperial palace. The centers of the outer palace are the three halls, namely, Taihe Hall, Zhonghe Hall and Baohe Hall. And the wings of it should be Wenhua Hall and Wuying Hall.

However, the centers of the inner palace are Qianqing Palace, Jiaotai Hall and Kunming Palace. With strict layout, the wings of the inner palace are the six halls in the west and east. In addition, four corners of the Imperial Palace are decorated with the turrets with elegant style. The palace is surrounded by the wall with the height of ten meters and the length of 3400 meters, the outside of which is the city moat of 52 meters in width. At present, some comprehensive historical and artistic galleries are set up.