Forbidden City revisited

We woke up to a cool Beijing on a sunny Friday morning . This was 8am at a road junction .

Streets being swept in the early morning by the worker in this machine .

We were to visit the Forbidden City this sunny morning .

I remembered the first time I visited the Forbidden City eight years ago. We were marvelled at the size of the palace museum and was excited to look at it ourselves.
This time around , having known the gigantic size of this magnificient heritage , I was trying to look for things I missed the last time. We entered from the north gate this time, which is actually the rear gate.

So we first entered the imperial garden backyard .

A more than 300 year-old tree in the Imperial garden .

 

It was explained that the Forbidden City was twice burned down to ashes in the history . So, what are the measures taken to protect the building now ?

Look at the wiring on the roof 

Preventive measures like this had been installed on the palace roofs .
From the Rear Palace where the women folks stayed , we walked through the Centre palace which was the administration palaces.

Parts of the Palace were repainted before the 2008 Olympics , especially the Front Palace . Look at the huge number of tourists in the venue , and this was said to be the low season of tourism .

It was estimated that there are at least 50,000 tourists here each day 

The red wall had been repainted...behind this wall , the women's palaces

Familiar movie scene ? But none of the movie scenes were taken here .

Emperor Qian Long's writings

Forbidden City revisited ...... still refreshing !