第1个回答 2008-03-15
Nearly all palaces have been reduced to rubbles in wars, but the last imperial palace group built in China in the 15th century has survived. Today it is called the Palace Museum.
Formerly the Palace Museum at the centre of Beijing was called the Forbidden City. It is surrounded by the imperial town, the inner and the outer city walls. Looking down from above, the palace complex is at the centre of several concentric squares. Around the 4-square-kilometre castle lies a wide artificial moat. All these make the palace complex awe-inspiring and mystic. Not like the palaces in other countries, Chinese palaces emphasize the absolute imperial power through complicated ritual rules and spatial and temporal variations during the procedures that start from the south end, the South-Facing Gate. The vassals and subjects went through the long “heavenly street”, the Heavenly Peace Gate or Tian'anmen, the Gate of Correct Demeanour, the Meridian Gate and the Hall of Supreme Harmony and finally entered the court. On the gate planks of the five gates there were nine rows of door-nails. Those door-nails, like other ornament in the palace complex, symbolized the supreme imperial power, because ancient Chinese believed nine and five were numbers of supremacy. Here ancient ideology and ancient buildings have become one.
The Meridian Gate is a U-form building. The square in front of the Gate can hold twenty thousand people. During the dynasties from the 15th to the 19th centuries, this was the place where emperors held national ceremonies, but in most cases, it was the place for the cabinet ministers to gratefully hear imperial edicts on knees.
The Gate of Supreme Harmony is the first gate after the entrance of the Palace Museum. From this gate one can see the Hall of Supreme Harmony on an eight-metre marble base. The palace was a symbol of the sovereign's absolute power.
The Hall of Supreme Harmony is also known as Golden Bell Hall. As the highest building in the Palace Museum, it is at the centre of the Forbidden City. The throne is on a two-metre meticulously carved base at the centre of the hall. Seventy-two nanmu pillars support the hall. Dragons, the symbols of the emperor, are seen on the throne, around the pillars, on the coffer ceiling, windows and the marble railings. Here everything emanates majesty and suggests the union of man and nature, and the divine right of the monarchs.
The Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Perfect Harmony and the Hall of Midway Harmony are the three audience halls. Those halls saw emperors hold nuptial ceremonies, summon their ministers and exercise their power. To meet the need of emperors' everyday life, nine thousand rooms for kitchens and food storage and so on were built at the back of the halls. The halls and the rooms together make the largest existent ancient building complex in China.