As the royal residences of the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties from the 15th to 20th century, the Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing known as the Forbidden City in Beijing was the center of State power in ancient China. It was constructed between 1406 and 1420 by Ming emperor Zhu Di and witnessed the enthronement of 14 Ming and 10 Qing emperors over the following 505 years. The Forbidden City was inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1987.

Located in the center of Beijing, the Forbidden City is the supreme model in the development of ancient Chinese palaces, providing insight into the social development of late dynastic China. The layout and spatial arrangement inherits and embodies the traditional characteristic of urban planning and palace construction in ancient China, featuring a central axis, symmetrical design and layout of outer court at the front and inner court at the rear and the inclusion of additional landscaped courtyards deriving from the Yuan city layout.

The Imperial Palace is rectangle in architecture. It is 961 meters long from south to north and 753 meters wide. There is city wall which is 10 meters high around and the moat outside of city wall is 52 meters wide.As the example of ancient architectural hierarchy, construction techniques and architectural art, it influenced official buildings of the subsequent Qing dynasty over a span of 300 years. The religious buildings, particularly a series of royal Buddhist chambers within the Palace, absorbing abundant features of ethnic cultures, are a testimony of the integration and exchange in architecture since the 14th century. 

Located in the heart of Beijing, the Palace Museum is approached from the south through the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian'an men). Ten-meter-high walls and a fifty-two-meter -wide moat surround the palace. Measuring 961 meters from north to south and 753 meters from east to west, the expansive architectural complex covers an area of 1,110,000 square meters. Each of the four sides has one gate, namely, the Meridian Gate (Wu men) on the south, the Gate of Divine Prowess (Shenwu men) on the north, the Eastern and Western Prosperity Gates (Donghua menandXihua men).Immediately to the north of the Palace Museum is Prospect Hill (Jing shan, also called Coal Hill), while the Wangfujing and Zhongnanhai neighborhoods lie to the east and west, respectively.