Agincourt 2

BEIJING

TIANANMEN SQUARE AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY

Two of the most visited places in Beijing must be Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, now known as the Palace Museum, judging from the crowds we met there.

We started our day in Tiananmen Square which houses the Mao Zedong Mausoleum and the Great Hall of the People. We knew we had a busy day ahead so we agreed to take a pass on the mausoleum but it wasn't open to the public that day anyway.

You can see a larger version of any photograph by simply clicking the mouse once on the image. Another click outside the image returns you to the text

The Mao Zedong Memorial Hall

A view across the Square on a hazy day, the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution in the background

We visited the Great Hall of the People. This is a very large building indeed, it is 356 metres in length and 206.5 metres in width and 465 metres high at its highest point. The Great Auditorium seats 3,693 in the lower auditorium, 3,515 in the balcony, 2,518 in the gallery and 300 to 500 on the dais. It functions as the meeting place of the National Peoples Congress, their Parliament. The Great Auditorium is often seen on TV. Construction was completed over a 10-month period in 1959, which is unbelievable if you see the size of the building. There are at least 35 beautifully decorated meeting rooms. It turned out that the one thing we really wanted to see, the Great Auditorium, was closed. Again some of these other rooms are seen on TV when foreign dignitaries sit around making small talk.

The Sichuan Room

An impressive hallway

A decorative wall painting

The Shanghai Room

I think this is the one commonly used for the visit of foreign dignitaries

The Beijing Room

The Forbidden City is on the back wall

Monument to the People's Heroes

Flower decorations in the Square

An enormous basket of flowers

The Forbidden City was the Chinese Imperial Palace from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912). It now houses the Palace Museum. For almost 500 years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government. It was built over 14 years starting in 1406 and it required over 100,000 skilled artisans and 1 million workers. It was called the Forbidden City because it was forbidden for commoners or even uninvited nobility to enter its sacred precincts when the Emperors lived there.