The Forbidden City: A Field Guide for Students

Students walk from south to north, straight up the middle of the palace. At each station they Look for one thing, Know a few facts, Think about how it connects to what they learned at school, Do a task, and see how the same idea lives on in Then & Now. Tasks come in three levels: Explore (everyone), Extend (if there is time) and Challenge (for the curious). Short on time? The three stations marked ★ take about 90 minutes.

1. Ancient China and the Mandate of Heaven (Year 7 History). An emperor ruled because Heaven allowed it. In the palace, students look for the ways it puts one person at the centre.
2. The Mongol Empire (Year 8 History, where taught). Kublai Khan's capital stood here before this palace. Palace Museum researchers have found that the Ming palace was built almost the same size as the Yuan palace, shifted a little to the east. Under one gate, archaeologists found Yuan, Ming and Qing layers stacked on top of each other.
3. Earthquakes (Year 8 Geography). The halls are made mostly of wood. Students keep one question in mind all day: how has a wooden palace stayed standing for six centuries?

Forbidden City is the old name. Today it is the Palace Museum (故宫), and it is open to the public. Most halls and gates have a name board in Chinese characters above the doorway, so the guide gives every place its Chinese name too, such as 太和殿 for the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

• Book ahead. The Palace Museum only admits visitors who have booked through its official channel, and checks the ID used to book. Students bring the passport they were booked with.
• Small groups. The palace is large and crowded, and big groups get separated. We split groups into teams of no more than 10 students, each with one adult.
• Audio guide. Multilingual audio guides can be hired at the Meridian Gate (午门) entrance and handed back at the Gate of Divine Prowess (神武门), the north exit.
• Toilets are on both the east and west sides of the main route.
• Souvenirs. The shop about halfway along the route is the one we recommend for quality and design.
• Treasure Gallery (珍宝馆). A separate ¥10 ticket. We don't recommend it for students under 14 who haven't studied the Qing dynasty: without that background, the objects are hard to make sense of.

South of the palace: Tiananmen 天安门

Groups reach the Meridian Gate from the south, through Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace. On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China from this gate, and the square in front of it is still where China holds its biggest state events, much as Red Square does in Moscow. Two museums nearby are worth the time: the National Museum of China (中国国家博物馆) on the east side of the square, and the Military Museum (中国人民革命军事博物馆) further west along Chang'an Avenue.

Emperor Yongle decided to build a palace in Beijing in 1406, large-scale building began in 1417, the palace was completed at the end of 1420, and the capital moved here in 1421. In 2024 the palace became part of a larger World Heritage Site, the Beijing Central Axis (北京中轴线), a 7.8 km line of 15 historic sites.

★Station 1 Meridian Gate午门

Look. Stand back before going through. Two long wings reach forward from the gate, one on each side, so visitors stand in a space walled in on three sides.

Know. This is the south gate and the main entrance of the palace, one of only four ways in through a wall 10 m high.

The Think, Do and Then & Now tasks for this station are in the full guide.

Station 2 Golden Water Bridges金水桥

Look. A curving stream crosses the path, with several stone bridges side by side. Is one wider or more decorated than the others?

Know. The middle bridge sits exactly on the central axis. The palace is built to be symmetrical on either side of that line.

The Think, Do and Then & Now tasks for this station are in the full guide.

Full station, as in the guide

★Station 3 Hall of Supreme Harmony太和殿

Look. Find a corner of the roof. Along the ridge sits a row of small creatures. Just under the edge of the roof is a thick band of wooden blocks stacked like fingers: the dougong, or bracket sets.

Know. This hall has ten roof creatures. The last, called Hangshi ("number ten"), appears only here. Other buildings in the palace have nine at most (the Palace of Heavenly Purity, 乾清宫, has nine). The more important the building, the more creatures.

Think. The brackets hold up the deep eaves, and the Palace Museum says they also help absorb shaking. Would a building that can flex a little survive an earthquake better than a stiff one? (Year 8 Geography: responding to geomorphic hazards.)

Do.

• Explore: Count the roof creatures. Do you get ten?
• Extend: Count them again on another hall later today. Rank the halls by importance using only your counts.
• Challenge: Draw one bracket set as accurately as you can. Label where the weight comes in and where it goes out.

Then & Now. Find out at home: do engineers in earthquake zones today design buildings to be completely stiff, or to move a little? Compare with what you saw here.

Station 4 Cloud-Dragon Stone云龙阶石

Look. Behind the Hall of Preserving Harmony (保和殿), in the middle of the staircase, lies one enormous carved slab with nine dragons twisting through clouds.

Know. It is a single piece of stone, about 16.7 m long, 3.07 m wide and 1.7 m thick, weighing about 200 tonnes. It was first carved in the Ming dynasty and re-carved under the Qing emperor Qianlong. The sign beside it gives 16.57 m, and old records suggest the original stone was about 17.1 m.

The Think, Do and Then & Now tasks for this station are in the full guide.

★Station 6 Water and Fire

Look. Along every level of the white stone terrace, find the carved dragon heads poking out from the edge. Then look around the courtyards for huge metal vats.

Know. When it rains, water drains off each level and pours out of the dragons' mouths, level by level, then runs into stone channels; the whole square slopes gently from north to south. Wooden halls burn easily, so the vats, made of bronze and iron and mostly from the Qing dynasty, were kept full of water for fighting fires.

The Think, Do and Then & Now tasks for this station are in the full guide.

Station 7 Gate of Divine Prowess神武门

Look. Before leaving through the north gate, turn around and look back south along the central axis. Across the road, the hill in Jingshan Park (景山公园) looks south over all the palace roofs.

Know. The axis runs on beyond the palace: north through Jingshan to the Bell and Drum Towers (钟鼓楼), south to Yongding Gate (永定门). The Temple of Heaven (天坛) is one of its 15 World Heritage sites.

The Think, Do and Then & Now tasks for this station are in the full guide.

After the palace: Jingshan and Beihai

Walking the whole palace is tiring, so we rest at the Gate of Divine Prowess before crossing into Jingshan Park. The hill is not high, and from the top the whole palace lies to the south. Jingshan has a small entry fee; foreign students may need to show proof that they are students for the student price. With energy left, Beihai Park (北海公园) is just to the west. Between 7 and 9 am and again between 5 and 7 pm, many Beijing residents come here to exercise and relax.

A palace is where a ruler lives, and it also tells visitors who holds power. The guide compares four buildings.

Students then discuss which building their own photo from the courtyard is most like, how they would design a parliament to show that power belongs to everyone (Parliament House was chosen from 329 entries), and whether comfort or authority mattered more to the people who built the Forbidden City.

Year levels follow the Western Australian Curriculum from the School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA). Teachers using another curriculum can map the same stations to their own course; check the content descriptions against the current documents.

• Palace Museum: building timeline 1406–1421 · palace dimensions · about the museum · the Yuan palace and the Ming palace · roof creatures · Cloud-Dragon Stone · golden bricks · palace drainage · water vats · collections · bracket sets
• National Cultural Heritage Administration: Beijing Central Axis inscribed on the World Heritage List
• Château de Versailles: Versailles, capital of the kingdom, 1682
• Royal Collection Trust: Who lived at Buckingham Palace
• Parliamentary Education Office: Parliament House
• School Curriculum and Standards Authority: Western Australian Curriculum, HASS
• Booking rules and the Treasure Gallery ticket: Beijing Bendibao, Palace Museum visitor guide
• Practical notes on the day: PreeChina's own visits with groups.

Read more on the Forbidden City visitor page, and see how a Beijing leg fits a trip on School Trip to Beijing. The other Beijing guides are on the Beijing field guides page.