Chinese Palaces

Palace, where emperors lived and held meetings, embodies the authority of the emperors with its magnificent momentum, large scale, and scrupulous structure, and strikes visitors intensively. Compared with the western countries, palace was the most important architecture in ancient China, a monarchic country with Confucianism as its state religion because it symbolizes everything.

One can find three means of artistic expression on the Chinese palace building. One is "quantity" , that is to say, the Chinese palace complex has the largest area and the greatest number of buildings; another is that axial symmetry is stressed with regard to the overall layout. It means that the most honorable building is always put in to the middle axis while the less important buildings on the two sides serve as its foil. Thirdly, the importance of palace is further emphasized as the layout extents to all the capital cities. Therefore, Chinese palace and capital cities are usually inseparable ¡ whose development is a process of perfection of the above concepts.

Palace buildings appeared in the Yin and Shang Dynasty (17B. C.-11B. C. ). After the Qin Dynasty, a large number of palaces were built. Hence palace buildings entered into a prime time. Those famous palaces in history include Epang Palace in the Qin Dynasty, Changle Palace in the Western Han Dynasty, Weiyang Palace, Darning Palace in the Tang Dynasty, etc. The most completely preserved palace to date is the Forbidden City, the Imperial Palace of Ming and Qing Dynasties, which is the most splendid ancient building complex in existence in China.

The Imposing Darning Palace

Daming Palace, built in 634, is one of the excellent constructions in the Tang Dynasty,and its foundation is still reserved. Darning Palace is located on the highland of Longshouyuan to the northeast of Chang'an—the capital of Tang—overlooking the whole city. Its major achievements and characteristics are as follow;

It is broad in scale, and rigid in plan. The plane of Darning Palace is an irregular rectangle. Excluding the imperial garden north of Taiye Pond, the scale of ruins is 3 times as big as the Purple Forbidden City, the imperial Palace of Ming and Qing.

It is mature in the management of architectural complex.

It has solved the technical problems in huge built-up area of wooden constructions. For example, the Hall of Linde covers 5000 square meters, two times bigger than the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Imperial Palace. The span of the Hall of Huanyuan reaches to 10 meters equaling that of the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

It is simple and unadorned widows and doors impress the visitors with solemnity and grace.

It Is genuine and mature in artistic treatment.