The vast walled palace at the heart of Beijing, built between 1406 and 1420 under the Ming dynasty's Yongle Emperor as the earthly mirror of cosmic order, from which twenty-four emperors ruled China for nearly five centuries — a forbidden inner world that ordinary people could not enter without permission, and now, emptied of its emperors, one of the most visited museums on earth.
For almost five hundred years it was the center of the world, walled off from it. The vast palace at the heart of Beijing held twenty-four emperors of two dynasties, and no ordinary person could pass its gates without permission, under threat of severe punishment. Inside the high red walls and the moat lay the Son of Heaven, a maze of golden-roofed halls laid out to mirror the order of the cosmos itself. In 1912 the last emperor, a boy named Puyi, gave up the throne; after he was expelled from the Inner Court in 1924, the palace opened as a public museum. The most secret place in China became its most crowded. The throne sits empty, and millions file past it every year.