Palace Museum

The Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, was the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It houses over 1.8 million artifacts, including paintings, ceramics, and historical documents.

Planning your visit

The Palace Museum is the Forbidden City: the imperial residence of twenty-four Ming and Qing emperors from 1420, closed to ordinary people for nearly five centuries, holding over 1.8 million artefacts across some 980 surviving buildings. The visit is a walk of well over a kilometre north along the central axis, through the Meridian Gate, across the vast courtyard to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and on through progressively more private courtyards to the imperial garden at the far end. The scale is the experience — this was a city rather than a palace — and it is also why many visitors underestimate the time and the walking involved.

Daily visitor numbers are capped, tickets are timed and sold in advance through the official system, and they routinely sell out days ahead in peak season. Passport details are required. Turning up without a reservation generally means not getting in. The Treasure Gallery and the Clock Gallery, both worth the detour, carry separate admission on top.

Bookable options include entry tickets bundled with Tiananmen Square access, tickets covering the Treasure Gallery, and premium deep tours with a guide that cover the side courtyards and lesser halls most visitors walk straight past — where much of the actual domestic life of the court happened. Several formats combine the palace with Jingshan Park immediately north, whose artificial hill gives the classic elevated view back across the sea of golden roofs, and is the single best photograph of the complex. Current dates are shown below.