Looking north from a spot inside the Forbidden City. Zijincheng, "Purple Forbidden City," was where China's imperial rulers used to reside and reign. It is "forbidden" because no outsiders, other than those who served the emperor and his immediate family and those who had special permissions, were allowed to enter. The color purple, as well as the yellow color represented by the tiles on the roofs of the buildings in the Forbidden City, was reserved for the imperial family.

Behind the few buildings shown here in the piture--a corner of the much larger Forbidden City--is a hill in Beihai Gongyuan (North Sea Park). North Sea Park used to be an exclusive imperial park but is now open to the public. The Forbidden City itself is now a national museum.