So after tackling the Great Wall, we visited the nr 2 on the Beijing must-see list: The Forbidden City! Here many Chinese emperors made their home! I mentioned in post 1 about China that everything here is big-bigger-biggest-MEGAHUGE and that really really goes up for this royal residence. It’s ENORMOUS! Like airport big. Really. I believe the Forbidden City has over 900 buildings and 9000 rooms.  It is the biggest palace complex in the world!! So we took a full day to explore and probably walked even more than on Great Wall Day haha!

Yeah that’s pretty big. The Forbidden City was finished in 1420, and its last emperor left as late as 1924. The royal family lived there with all their servants. After sunset no males were allowed in the city so the servants who were there were all eunuchs…

All buildings were covered in beautiful decorations,  the royal color yellow was apparent everywhere.

On the photo below, the decorated slabs in the middle were actually the stairs used by the emperors only. Very royal stairs!

Yeah, that’s one big royal complex ;-)

Lucky for us it was a weekday so it wasn’t THAT crowded…

Can you imagine going there on the weekend :-o Its 9000 rooms would be filled :p

So this is where the Emperor lived during most of the year, but in summer he tried to escape the heat and go that other palace. Yeah, the Summer Palace, the subject of our next post!