The Forbidden City covers an area of more than 720,000 square meters, with a construction area of about 6.5438+0.5 million square meters. Surrounded by a 654.38+00-meter-high city wall and a 52-meter-wide moat. In such a large area, a group of buildings with such a large scale are built by combining various architectural technologies. Not only is there no miscellaneous phenomenon, but it gives people a sense of rigorous structure, gorgeous colors and regular layout. The most important means is to highlight an extremely obvious central axis in the building. This central axis is organically integrated with the whole city of Beijing, starting from the bell tower in the north and reaching Yongdingmen in the south, with a total length of about 8 kilometers, and the garden part of the royal restricted area accounts for about one third. The important buildings in the palace are all on this central axis, and other buildings are symmetrically distributed on the east and west sides. The design and layout of the whole palace showed the "dignity" of the feudal monarch and the strictness of the feudal hierarchy.

The Forbidden City is about 960 meters long from north to south and 760 meters wide from east to west. There is a grotesque, harmonious and beautiful turret in each corner of the city, which is octagonal and is called nine beams, eighteen columns and seventy-two ridges. There are doors around the city, the main entrance to the south is the noon gate, the north gate is called Shenwumen, the east gate is called Donghuamen, and the west gate is called Xihuamen. The whole courtyard is divided into two parts, namely "front yard" and "back bedroom". The "former dynasty" is the place where the emperor held the grand ceremony, mainly the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Zhonghe, the Hall of Baohe, and the Wenhua Hall and Wuying Hall on the east and west sides. "Houdian" is the place where the emperor, his concubines and minor children lived, mainly in Gan Qing Palace, Jiaotai Palace, Kunning Palace and the Sixth East-West Palace.

The Forbidden City is a group of buildings with first-class red walls and yellow tiles. Why? According to the Taoist theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements, the five elements include gold, wood, water, fire and earth, among which earth occupies a central position. Because the people of China have lived on the Loess Plateau for generations, they have a feeling of admiration and attachment to yellow, so since the Tang Dynasty, yellow has become the color representing the royal family, and others are not allowed to use it in clothes and buildings. On the other hand, red symbolizes happiness, auspiciousness and wealth. For these reasons, the basic colors of the Palace Museum are red and yellow.