The Forbidden City

Spreading across 720,000 square meters in the heart of Beijing, the Forbidden City, China's former imperial palace from 1420 to 1911, represents the pinnacle of traditional Chinese architecture and remains the world's largest architectural complex made of wood. Also known as the Palace Museum today, it is home to 1.86 million cultural relics.

On a group study session of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in 2013, Xi said: "Efforts should be made to sort out traditional cultural resources and bring back to life relics sleeping in closed palaces, legacies of the vast land of China and records in ancient books."