it's the biggest palace complex in the world with almost 10,000 rooms So big that it's a city unto itself And it was all built for one man For 500 years it was the seat of the most powerful ruler on earth He had absolute control over the life and death of his followers Until the 20th century entry to the inner precincts was prohibited to all males except the emperor and Unix Trespasses in this palace met one fate death Even the name of the palace inspired fear 24 Chinese emperors called it home but their subjects called it the forbidden city Today its long closed doors open as we go deep inside China's forbidden [Music] city When it was first built the Forbidden City was one of the most secret places on Earth Even today when it attracts 8 million visitors a year only a small part of it is open to the public But on the eve of the 600th anniversary of its construction the entire complex is unlocked for our [Music] cameras Between 1407 and 1420 up to a million convict and conscript laborers did the heavy work while a 100,000 skilled craftsmen completed the fine detail It's the biggest palace complex still standing in China And it had to be big because it was the home of a god [Music] [Music] The Chinese emperor was more than just a ruler To the people of Imperial China he was a divine being the son of heaven and the link between this world and the celestial They believed that the supreme deity lived in a 10,000 room palace on the pole star But the son of heaven's palace was here on earth And as legend has it because the son shouldn't outdo the father his palace had only 9,999 [Music] rooms As the son of heaven the Chinese emperor's actions were said to make the sun rise and the crops [Music] grow His palace the forbidden city was both the seat of government and a sacred place The ancient Chinese believed that just as the polestar palace of the supreme deity was the center of the heavens so the forbidden city was the center of the earth To them it was the navl of the world [Music] The start of the 15th century was a chaotic time in China And at the heart of that chaos was a prince named Zudi The victorious Chinese army had only recently pushed the Mongols back over the Great Wall When the country was once more torn aunder Zudi the prince from the north rebelled against the emperor in the south Zudi seized the throne but his troubles were far from over Although he had conquered the capital Nanjing he still had powerful enemies there [Music] Even executing his opponents didn't solve his problems There was an assassination attempt and it became clear to Zhu that Nanjing remained a dangerous place Haunted by the ghosts of his opponents he sought a way out But it wasn't only the situation in Nanjing that gave Judi sleepless nights Mongol armies were once more on the march and threatening to breach the Great [Music] Wall So Zudi found a radical solution to both his problems He abandoned Nanjing and created a new capital Beijing in the north It was a massive undertaking By the time it was done millions of people had moved to Beijing and built one of the greatest cities of all time Judi was a ruthless but gifted ruler and a megalomaniac He never did anything small At the same time as he started building the new capital he equipped a huge armada of ships to sail the western seas The ships were the largest wooden vessels ever built and he assembled a fleet of 300 The biggest had nine masts and could carry a thousand people It was the largest armada in history until the Second World War The fleet was commanded by the Unic Admiral Tang Ha It ruled the water for 28 years But Judy had even bigger projects at home He had the Grand Canal rebuilt and the Great Wall [Music] extended But his largest project was to tear down Kubla Khan's old palace in Beijing and build a new one in its [Music] place The heirs of Genghis Khan had lived in Beijing for almost 100 years But the old palace wasn't good enough for Zu He had it raised to the ground to make way for the new [Music] one The rubble was used to make a mountain that overlooked his new palace [Music] complex The construction of the new palace took 14 years By the time it was done it was said to have a thousand buildings and more than 9,000 rooms For 500 years its name would be spoken with awe It was called the Forbidden City At the very heart of Beijing it formed a large rectangle 3/4 of a kilometer wide and nearly a kilometer deep High walls and a wide moat separated it from the rest of the city The walls enclosed an immense space 720,000 square m 55 Buckingham Palaces or more than 100 football pitches could fit inside its grounds [Music] From the 15th century to the 20th the Forbidden City was the hub of the Chinese Empire It was the home of 24 emperors the seat of government and the heart of a civilization [Music] The Forbidden City was a city within a city deep inside the walled city of Beijing King was another walled city the imperial city This was reserved for the royal family and the highest members of society And within that was yet another walled city the most secret and exclusive place in China where mistaken entry could result in death The Forbidden City Hidden behind its high impenetrable walls life in the Forbidden City assumed mythic qualities The only thing that most people outside could see were the gold colored roofs of the highest buildings soaring above the walls For them the Forbidden City was synonymous with mystery But today we can go where they could not On the eve of the 600th anniversary of its construction its doors are opened and we can finally reveal the secrets of the Forbidden [Music] City In 1407 Europe was recovering from the plague The Aztecs in Mexico were building an empire And in Beijing preparations had begun on the Forbidden City [Music] It would take almost 10 years just to gather the necessary building materials and assemble the workers Little is known of most of the men who did the construction work Their names have been lost to time Even some of the building techniques they used remain a mystery Yet these master architects and craftsmen built a palace of enduring beauty [Music] The Forbidden City was the largest wooden palace complex in the world At its heart were the three great halls standing on high white marble terraces that raised them more than two stories above the courtyard [Music] More than a thousand carved marble dragons drained rainwater away from the huge terraces [Music] The palace complex was an architectural masterpiece and today is one of the United Nations World Heritage [Music] sites The Forbidden City was conceived on a grand scale Visitors had to walk down a majestic ceremonial avenue just to get to it On the way they passed through three [Music] gates Today the most famous of these is Tanaman Gate But even larger was the Meridian Gate which pierced the wall that surrounds the Forbidden City The Meridian Gate was the main entrance to the Forbidden City It was the tallest gate in Beijing the height of a 12story [Music] building The Hall of Supreme Harmony was the most important building in the Forbidden City And at half the size of a football pitch it was also the biggest sitting on three white marble terraces Like all the buildings in the Forbidden City it was made of wood Although it contained the most important throne room in the palace complex the largest imperial audiences took place not inside the building but in the vast courtyard outside Thousands of officials would gather there to hear imperial proclamations [Music] [Music] Audience days would begin in the dead of night Government officials called Mandarins would start to gather at 3:00 [Music] a.m at 4:00 The palace gates would open and they would file inside [Music] Although they were the highest officials in the land they would walk in near silence There were heavy penalties for talking coughing or [Music] spitting There were nine ranks or grades of Mandarin Rank was designated by the color of button on their hats and by the square emblems on their clothes Different birds were embroidered on their official robes from a crane for the highest rank to a fly catcher for the [Music] lowest Conscientious emperors took audience days very seriously But not all emperors were conscientious On one occasion a notoriously dissolute emperor failed to show up at all His mandarins waited all day before the assembly was finally cancelled Hungry and thirsty they were in such a rush to finally leave that one of the ministers was crushed to [Music] death The Forbidden City was divided into two sections the inner court and the outer court The main entry to the palace was from the south Furthest from the entry gate was the inner court the residential part of the palace The outer court was the official part of the palace The most important state ceremonies took place in these halls and courtyards The Hall of Supreme Harmony was the largest and most splendid building in the Forbidden City Key events in the life of the Empire took place here Behind the Hall of Supreme Harmony was the smaller square shaped hall of Middle Harmony And behind that was the hall of preserving harmony These three great halls were used only for the most important ceremonies and events like the enthronement of a new emperor his wedding or the celebration of the Luna New Year [Music] The vast hall of Supreme Harmony's own history was less than harmonious Disaster struck the hall with alarming regularity It was the victim of several catastrophic fires As the tallest building in the Forbidden City it was frequently hit by lightning The first time this happened was just a 100 days after the building was officially opened in [Music] 1421 The building sat a burntout shell for 18 years before it was restored Special trees called nanmoo provided the timber for the rebuild They were found only in southwestern China and obtaining them was a hazardous occupation It was said at the time that a thousand men went into the forest but only 500 came out Monsoon rains were used to float the logs down from the mountains In one famous legend a Nanu log crashed into a boulder with a sound like thunder smashing the rock to pieces When the current was against them the floating logs were dragged upstream The journey of a single log could take up to 4 years A 100,000 Nanmu logs were used in the construction of the Forbidden [Music] City Nanmu wood was the most important building material Each of the pillars that formed the main supports of the Hall of Supreme Harmony was heuned from a single tree The pillars that surround the throne were given special treatment Creating the texture are gilded dragons that wind sineuously around the pillars The Forbidden City had many throne rooms but the grandest was in the Hall of Supreme Harmony where both the hall and the throne were heavily decked out in gold The throne was made of gilded rosewood and surrounded by incense burners and perfumemers There were also thrones in other audience halls all covered with dragons Images of dragons could be found throughout the Forbidden City appearing high overhead and underfoot on roofs ceilings walls and pavements and on thrones furniture and carpets even on the emperor's dishes and clothes The emperor's dragons were special Unlike the other dragons in China the emperor's dragons had five claws The dragons were revered as bringingers of rain Vitally important in an agricultural country and for people living in buildings prone to lightning strikes Unlike the malevolent dragons of Western mythology Chinese dragons can be playful and benevolent Here in the Forbidden City they didn't breathe fire but spouted water They were often depicted frolicking in clouds or waves [Music] In front of the hall of preserving harmony was one of the marvels of the forbidden city It was carved from a single block of stone No one ever walked on this heavily sculpted ceremonial stairway and only the emperor in his palenquin was carried over it [Music] It would have taken enormous skill to heue the huge stone slab out of the earth But that was the easy part The real challenge was moving it to Beijing The architects were master builders But moving a 300 ton slab about the same weight as 250 cars required more than just brute strength It also required imagination and 50 km of ice In 1420 there was no vehicle big enough or strong enough to carry the stone slab And it was so heavy that rollers put under it would sink into the ground So the engineers came up with an ingenious solution They moved the slab in the debt of winter and not just over the frozen ground but on a sheet of ice Every half kilometer they dug a well and spread the water onto the road Then 20,000 men and horses dragged the slab over the ice that formed Even so it took them 28 days to make the 50 km journey from the quarry to Beijing [Music] [Music] In 1679 disaster struck the Hall of Supreme Harmony for a third time But on this occasion it was not an act of God but the hand of man that brought the building down twice before the hall had been struck by lightning and burnt to a cinder But the third fire was ignited by careless kitchen Unix and there was nothing anyone could do to quell the raging inferno The six Unix who caused the fire paid with their lives When the palace had previously burned down it had been relatively easy to rebuild it All it required was the political will and a source of Nanmu timber But this time it was [Music] harder 80 years had passed since the last fire Such a long time that no one remained who could remember how to make the puzzle-like brackets that locked the beams in place The palace archive was scoured Even the emperor himself tried to solve the puzzle But the secret of how to build the complicated structure had been lost to time Eventually a commoner provided the solution He was an old man in his 70s but for more than 40 years he'd labored in the construction department of the Forbidden City He created a model of the hall that revealed the secret of the interlocking brackets When that model was scaled up to the surprise and delight of all the design worked perfectly The hall of Supreme Harmony would burn down twice more in its long history the curse of being the tallest building around in an age before lightning conductors But every time it burnt down it was rebuilt Lesser buildings could be replaced with others and over the years many new buildings were erected in the back courts of the Forbidden City but the Hall of Supreme Harmony was always rebuilt on the same spot It was a constant presence in the life of the palace Also constantly present were the palace unics the largest group in the Forbidden City They kept the place running But the Unix were not born They were made from a surprising number of volunteers [Applause] The Forbidden City was frequently swamped with unuks They did the brunt of the palace work From cooks and cleaners to laundrymen bearers and guards of emperor's women unuks were everywhere With the exception of the emperor himself they were the only men allowed to live in the inner [Music] court Until the 15th century many Unix were prisoners of war who had been forcibly castrated Adult male captives were usually executed but captive boys had both the scrotum and the penis removed If a boy survived this operation he was allowed to become a palace servant Some upwardly mobile boys even put themselves forward for castration or were volunteered by their penless parents One unic described his reasons for doing this It seemed a little thing to give up one pleasure for so many By suffering that small change I could be sure of an easy life in surroundings of beauty and magnificence So many boys volunteered that the palace became a wash with Unix Eventually laws were put in place to limit the number of unics allowed in the palace at any one time from a maximum of around 70,000 The number of unics in the Forbidden City dropped over time When Pui the last emperor was overthrown in 1912 there were only around 1,500 unuks on his [Music] staff But despite the size of his entourage the emperor must have had a lonely [Music] job His was a role of breathtaking complexity He was the moral leader of the nation statesman legislator supreme judge administrator commander of the army patron of art and chief examiner He sat at the apex of a huge bureaucracy Although thousands of Mandarins reported to him he had the final say The government produced a relentless flow of written documents [Music] Literacy and good handwriting were the keys to a job in the [Music] government China was the world's first meritocracy and government officials were selected for their literacy examination scores Exams for the top offices were held every third year This is the list of successful candidates [Music] To become a government officer a Mandarin one had to score highly on the tests The exams were given in stages around the country Then every 3 years the top candidates from the regional exams came to the Forbidden City for the final test where the examiner was the emperor himself The highest scoring candidates were given jobs in the [Music] government One examination candidate recalled his feelings as he waited to hear the exam results It was a little cold that day Just before dawn I knelt with the other candidates on the ground in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony to wait for the results The day before there had been a lot of gossip about who did best and I would lost all hope When the results were read out I'd heard that the top candidate was none other than me Whenever my name was called a fan fair was played I couldn't believe my ears and I didn't dare to step forward But in the end a protocol officer dragged me out of the line The emperor gave me a prize and I was carried out of the palace through the emperor's own gate In the bureaucratic and status conscious imperial court everything had a [Music] hierarchy Mandarins and concubines were graded and even buildings were ranked [Music] The rank of a building was determined by the mythological creatures on the eaves of its roof The more creatures there were the higher the status At the front of this roof is a man riding a chicken a reminder of a tyrannical ruler who was hanged from the eaves of his palace Behind him is a row of nine mythological beasts [Music] In the 18th century the multiple ranks of Mandarin sorely taxed the patience of one great emperor He was a hands-on ruler who found the bureaucracy cumbersome and he dreamed of centralizing more of the power in his own hands He penned a couplet expressing his longing for more power which still hangs on the wall of his former [Music] [Laughter] [Music] home He may even have put his words into action Some people claimed that he practiced what he preached and used a secret passage that allowed him to bypass the bureaucrats This mysterious gap between the palace and the government office is rumored to have been a private passage his own personal shortcut to his government ministers Now sealed up the passage has yet to reveal all its secrets [Applause] [Music] The Chinese New Year is the most joyous time of year here Families come together to celebrate and wish each other good fortune And as this ancient painting shows New Year was also celebrated in the Forbidden City [Music] The Forbidden City was more than just the seat of government It was also the home of the emperor and his family Hidden deep within its walls the inner court was the most private part of the palace complex It was the domestic heart of the empire [Music] Even though he was the son of heaven the emperor had a family life He had many wives like any man of the time In imperial China polygamy was the preferred status Nuclear families were for the [Music] poor The inner court was located in the northern third of the Forbidden City This was the woman's realm the female private part of the palace Its densely packed courtyards were separated from the wide spaces and great halls of the public male part by a wall No man could enter the woman's realm of the inner court without the emperor's permission except of course the [Music] Unix The architecture of the inner court was less grand and more domestic than that of the outer court The principles of yin and yang governed its layout There were 12 residential palaces for the emperor's women six on each side of the palace's central axis Between the six east and six west palaces lay the most important buildings of the inner court called the three rear palaces They mirrored the three great halls of the outer court [Music] The largest of the rear palaces was the emperor's residence and the second largest the residence of the [Music] empress One of the most notorious residents of the forbidden city was the empress daishi A close contemporary of Queen Victoria she virtually ruled China between 1861 and 1908 Sishi was a middle- ranking concubine who had borne the emperor his only son But her good fortune was a tragedy for China She exercised power for almost 50 years first as a favorite concubine and then when her husband the emperor died by controlling her young son and nephew when they ascended the [Music] throne On her 50th birthday Si spent 6 million silver tales redecorating her palace the equivalent of more than 80 million US in today's money Her daily routine was highly extravagant Every morning her female attendants would greet her proclaiming "May luck be with you venerable ancestor." Then they made her bed and brought her a silver basin of hot water To ease the joints in her hands Tishi wrapped them in hot towels and soaked them in the hot water for so long that it had to be replenished several times After that a hot towel was placed on her face to reduce wrinkles A unic was then called in to brush her hair paint her eyebrows powder her face and rouge her cheeks Then Sishi would smoke two pipes of dipping snuff and drink a cup of milk tea She was partial to drinking human milk and cow's milk and thought them both tonics for youth Si was as rigid and demanding outside her budois as she was within The manipulative former concubine ruled the court with an iron will It was a thousand years since a woman had last sat on the dragon throne But that didn't stop Tishi She devised an extraordinary arrangement of a throne behind the throne The two separated by a thin curtain While her son sat on the throne in front of the curtain she sat on her own throne behind him firmly gripping the reigns of state Tishi was the power behind the throne literally Yet in 1908 she made a deathbed decision that caused a child to assume power and brought down an empire [Music] There were many women in an emperor's life In addition to an empress he also had consorts and concubines This was because the emperor's most important official duty was to produce a son and heir by any means necessary So rather than place all his eggs in one basket most emperors had several wives [Music] The 17th century emperor Kang Xi a contemporary of William Penn the father of Pennsylvania and the son King Louis the 14th of France ruled China for 60 years with 38 official wives plus another 17 unofficial ones The relatively selfless Guang Shu had just one empress and two concubines Although he died young so may not have reached his full compliment But although the emperor ruled the country he was not in charge of his marital life The woman he favored most wouldn't necessarily become his empress Wives and concubines were often selected because of politics not passion and there were many to choose from Girls aged between 13 and 17 would be presented to the court for selection But it was not a simple beauty contest During Tishi's reign in the 19th century neither good looks nor personality ranked highly in the selection criteria What was really important was breeding and breeding potential The number one selection was given a scepter and became empress The other girls chosen were given purses and they became consorts and concubines In a strict hierarchical structure wives came in nine ranks There was one empress one imperial consort two high consorts four consorts six imperial concubines eight worthy ladies and unlimited numbers of the lower three ranks In 1922 the last wedding was held in the Forbidden City It was the final throw of the Imperial dice The future depended on how things went in the Imperial bed chamber Things couldn't have gone more [Music] wrong The 19th century was a period of accelerating decline in the Chinese Empire Increasingly life within the Forbidden City resembled a fairy tale The wedding procession captured in this 19th century painting shows the pomp and splendor that surrounded one royal wedding Even as the empire outside the forbidden city crumbled the bride to be was carried in a sedan chair from her ancestral home to the palace It was the last time she would see her familial home In the painting low-flying clouds were depicted swirling around the palace This was to symbolize that the man getting married was the son of [Music] heaven The last wedding to take place in the Forbidden City wasn't nearly as grand In 1922 the last emperor Pui was a virtual prisoner in the decaying palace Just 16 himself he was marrying a 17-year-old girl selected from a photograph Double happiness characters feston the wedding chamber Anthropomorphic figures that resembled a happy couple holding hands Every surface of the room was covered with these images to promote a successful wedding [Music] night But in fact the night was a disaster Pui described the fiasco in his autobiography It was unfernished except for the bed platform which filled about a quarter of it and everything was red When we had drunk the nuptual cup and eaten some sons and grandsons cakes and entered this dark room I felt stifled The bride sat down on her bed her head bent down I looked around me and saw that everything was red red bat curtains red pillows a red dress a red skirt red flowers and a red face It all looked like a melted red candle I did not know whether to stand or sit Decided I preferred my own room and went back [Music] there It wasn't only the last emperor who lived by himself No matter how many women he had in his life the emperor in the Forbidden City always lived alone His empress and concubines lived in separate palaces Emperors weren't in control of their own love lives As if they were prize bulls raceh horses or show dogs others decided when they should mate Astrologers would pick auspicious days for procreation Yet even then the emperor and his wife would not spend the entire night together Unix would hustle the concubine out of the bed chamber when the emperor's duty was done It was their responsibility to ensure that the emperor woke alone fresh for the next day's work Although an emperor had a veritable harum of women to choose from getting one for the night took planning Each of the emperor's women had a marker with her vital statistics The emperor would select a marker after lunch to give her time to prepare Getting ready for the emperor didn't involve dressing and makeup Rather the concubine was bathed depilated and as legend has it delivered to the bed chamber naked This was not an erotic treat but to ensure that she wasn't carrying any weapons [Music] It was big guns that finally brought down the dynasty In the 20th century a tidal wave of revolution rolled over the country The imperial system was finally swept away [Music] All that remained was the last emperor and a crumbling palace that was forbidden no more In 1924 the last emperor was expelled from the palace and the buildings began a new life with a new name the Palace Museum [Music] But this rebirth was traumatic The palace's very survival was at [Music] stake Years of war and neglect had left the palace in ruins Today a mammoth project is underway to restore the palace to its former glory But as the old is repaired what new secrets will be uncovered [Music] heat