seni asia

THE FORBIDDEN CITY 

Further Information: 

The Forbidden City was the imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty and now houses the Palace Museum. For almost five hundred years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government.

Built in 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 m2 (7,800,000 sq ft). The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987.

The pagoda is evolved from the stupa from the Indian subcontinent, a tomb-like structure where sacred relics could be kept safe and venerated. The architectural structure of the stupa has spread across Asia, and the original dome-shaped structure of the stupa from India was gradually fused together with the design of ancient Chinese towers to form the shape of the Chinese pagoda. The earliest base-structure type for Chinese pagodas were square-base and circular-base. By the 5th-10th centuries the Chinese began to build octagonal-base pagoda towers.

Chinese term for pagoda did not exist until the first century. The reason is that this new form of architecture was introduced to China only when Buddhism spread to the country.

THE KOFUN PERIOD (ca. A.D. 250-ca. 600)

KOFUN means old tomb of earth mounds. The mounds contained large stone burial chambers. Its shaped like keyholes and surrounded by moats. By the late Kofun period, the distinctive burial chambers, originally used by the ruling elite, also were built for commoners. 

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