Completion of the Forbidden City

The Yongle Emperor completed the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1420, after roughly fourteen years of construction using an estimated one million laborers, as the new imperial palace and seat of government following his relocation of the Ming capital from Nanjing to Beijing. The complex of 980 surviving buildings, organized along a strict north-south axis and divided into an outer court for state ceremony and an inner court for the imperial household, follows classical Chinese principles of palace planning going back centuries, built almost entirely of wood on stone platforms and famously fire-prone, having been rebuilt after fires numerous times through the Ming and Qing dynasties. It served as the residence of 24 emperors across the Ming and Qing dynasties until the fall of imperial China in 1912, and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 as the largest surviving palace complex in the world.