Chinese palace

A Chinese palace is an imperial complex where the court, civil government, royal garden and defensive fortress resided.

The Chinese character gong (宮; meaning "palace") represents two connected rooms (呂) under a roof (宀).

It contains large halls (殿) for ceremonies and official business, as well as smaller buildings, temples, towers, residences, galleries, courtyards, gardens, and outbuildings.

The world's largest palace currently still in existence,[2][3][4] the Forbidden City, was constructed by the Ming dynasty during the reign of the Yongle Emperor.

Following this cultural catastrophe, the imperial court was forced to relocate to the old and austere Forbidden City where it stayed until 1924, when the Last Emperor was expelled by a republican army.

Hall of Supreme Harmony within the Forbidden City of Beijing
Model of Xianyang Palace (1st millennium BCE); with architectural styles typical of pre-imperial China
Games taking place in Northern Song palace gardens (c.10th century). These imperial 'backyards' often came with grand artificial lakes and man-made islands.
Linde Hall of Daming Palace, used for recreational purposes and the entertaining foreign embassies .
Song palaces are known to be less grand than both its predecessors and successors, this was due to the relatively egalitarian zeitgeist and policies of the period (see Culture of the Song dynasty ).
The Forbidden City as depicted in a Ming painting. Despite significant changes in architectural details, palaces' general layout remained somewhat constant.
In the 1880s, a New Summer Palace was built by Empress Cixi for her 60th birthday at the expense of the National Defense treasury . Costing over 20 million taels , it was still much smaller than its predecessor.