The Forbidden City, known as Gu Gong in Chinese, was the imperial palace throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties—the years 1420 to 1912. It lays at the center of Beijing. It currently houses the Palace Museum. The Forbidden City served as the home of emperors and their households as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government for nearly five hundred years.The most noticeable and vital aspects of the Forbidden City are the history, architecture, and collections.The capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing since Hongwu Emperor's son Zhu Di became the Yongle Emperor, and the construction of the Forbidden City began in 1406. The development lasted fourteen years and required over a million workers. Once the Forbidden City was established, it used to be …show more content…
This relatively small but high quality antique was kept in storage until 1965, when it again became public, as the core of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, some damage was done to the Forbidden City as the country was swept up in revolutionary zeal. During the Cultural Revolution, however, further destruction was prevented when Premier Zhou Enlai sent an military battalion to protect the city. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987 by UNESCO as the "Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties", because of its significant place in the development of Chinese architecture and culture. It is presently administered by the Palace Museum, which is fulfilling a sixteen-year restoration project to repair and restore all buildings in the Forbidden City to their pre-1912 state. On November 8, 2017, President of the United States Donald Trump was the first US President to be granted a state dinner in the Forbidden City since the founding of the People's Republic of China. The Forbidden City is a rectangle, with 961 meters (3,153 ft) from north to south and 753 meters (2,470