The famous Forbidden City in Beijing, founded in 1405, is one of the greatest royal palaces in the world: a magnificent complex of residences, temples, and courts, seat of the great Ming dynasty of Chinese emperors. Long closed to the outside world, it is now a museum. This book takes the reader on a tour of the Forbidden City, and by examining its artworks, its history, and its elaborate ceremonies reveals the world of imperial China over the five centuries of its greatest might and grandeur - five centuries during which, despite great cultural and political changes, life within the palace walls followed an immutable and divinely ordered course, until the day when the modern world entered its gates and changed it forever.