Madeleine´s adventure in China (Shanghai)

During our first day, we went to the forbidden city. It was VERY crowded so we never went into the "real forbidden city". Just passed around it and had a look. The plan was to go there another day. Oskar did, Pernilla and Andreas are still in BEijing and they will. But I, I feel ashamed to say it: I didnt went to the forbidden city more than from the outside of it. Tooo bad! Maybe I need to study on it now, so I provide som facts taken from wikepdia both for me and for you:

The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum. For almost five hundred years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government.

Built in 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms^[1] and covers 720,000 m² (7,800,000 sq ft). The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture,^[2] and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987,^[2] and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.

Since 1925, the Forbidden City has been under the charge of the Palace Museum, whose extensive collection of artwork and artifacts were built upon the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Part of the museum's former collection is now located in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Both museums descend from the same institution, but were split after the Chinese Civil War.