The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City was listed by UNESCO as the largest preserved ancient wooden structures in the world and declared a World Heritage Site in 1987.

Forbidden_City1

It had been the imperial palace for nearly 500 years (1420 to 1912) for 24 emperors. The size of the Palace is enormous, 720,000 m or 7,800,000 sq ft, which equals to 100 football fields. It has 870 buildings, 8,700 houses, and 9,999 rooms (now, 8,704 rooms).

During the Ming Dynasty, Kuai Xiang was appointed as the architect in 1417. It took 18 years to complete and utilized 2 million workers including nearly 240,000 artisans.

(The first picture was from the wiki commons and the rest were chosen from my China travel photo file.)

Notes:

These workers were not slaves. Skillful workers were recruited from different cities and provinces in China,
A well was dug every 164 feet (50 meters) along the road to pour water onto the road in winter enabling huge stones slide on ice into the city, which saved hard-laboring work.
On May 9,1421 three areas in the Forbidden City was burned by thunder; and it was re-built in 1436 .