The Forbidden City
Beijing
Red walls and yellow glazed roofs mark the old imperial palace; the lanes around it are grey brick.
Why Beijing is palace red
The Forbidden City, at the heart of Beijing, was the palace of China's emperors from 1420 to 1912. Its colour scheme followed strict rules. Walls and columns are red, a colour of good fortune and joy. Roofs are covered in yellow glazed tiles. Yellow stood for earth and the centre in the five-elements system, and bright yellow roofs were reserved for the emperor. Beams under the eaves are painted in blue and green with gold. The halls stand on terraces of white marble. Ordinary people were not allowed colour on this scale: the courtyard houses of the surrounding lanes, the hutongs, are grey brick with grey tiles. The palace is now a museum.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Beijing
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Forbidden City" on Wikipedia. If you know Beijing and we have it wrong, tell us.
More colour cities
All colour cities
🇨🇳 The white and red palaceLhasaThe Potala Palace rises in white and dark red above the city; gilded roofs and prayer flags surround it.
🇨🇳 The rainbow mountains of GansuZhangye DanxiaStriped hills of red, orange, yellow and pale green sandstone in the dry north-west of China.
🇮🇳 The open-air gallery of RajasthanShekhawatiMerchant mansions in the towns of north Rajasthan are covered inside and out with painted murals.
🇮🇳 Land of mirror work and white desertKutchEmbroidery, tie-dye and block print in deep red and indigo, set against the white salt of the Rann.
🇮🇳 The silk cityKanchipuramA temple town in Tamil Nadu whose heavy silk saris pair strong body colours with contrasting gold borders.
🇮🇳 Red earth and a golden sphereAurovilleAn experimental township on red earth near Pondicherry, centred on the golden globe of the Matrimandir.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Shekhawati In: Digrajsingh, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Kutch In: Zeel Satyendra Modi, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Kanchipuram In: Ssriram mt, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Auroville In: Kaspar Konrad, Public domain, source
- Lhasa Cn: 钉钉, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Zhangye Danxia Cn: YubYub41, CC BY-SA 4.0, source