Ancient Chinese buildings were mainly wooden structures, and so it is not easy to preserve them. Hence, the aforementioned great works of architecture no longer exist. The most important extant palace is the Beijing Palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, called the Forbidden City, and now referred to as the Palace Museum, which was built in the14th year (142O) of the reign of Ming Dynasty Emperor Cheng Zu.(.2-5)

Beijing was transformed on the basis of the metropolis of the Yuan Dynasty. The city was in a slightly horizontal square shape. It stretched6,65O meters from east to west, and 5,35O meters from north to south, with brick city walls on all sides. It consisted of nine city gates, outside each of which there was a weng cheng (earthen-jar city). On the city gate was a two-layered three-eaved tall building. On the Weng Cheng was a four-layered embrasured watch tower, with walls laid with bricks, making it look very magnificent and solid. In the southeast and southwest corners of Beijing, there were also gauge-shaped plane corner towers, also of four layers laid up with bricks. Only Zhengyangmen, in the middle of the south city wall, the front gate of its Weng Cheng, the tower of Weng Cheng in Deshengmen and the southeast corner tower, remain.

The Forbidden City, located in the center of the axial line, stretches76O meters from east to west and 96O meters from north to south, with its size accounting for only a little over one-sixth of Taijigong city in Chang'an of the Tang Dynasty. On the northernmost end of Forbidden City was a built-up 5O meter hill called Zhenshan (also called jingshan),with the implication of suppressing the imperial air of the Yuan Dynasty. At the bottom of the hill was a Yuan Dynasty palace. The big pavilion built at the center of the hill was the commanding height of the whole city and the plane geometric center To the north of jingShan, the Drum and Bell towers along the axis face jingshan from afar.

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