Imperial Palace of Vietnam - Forbidden City

[Saigonese]

Outer wall Palace Gate of the Forbidden City


Cuu Vi Than Cong - Holy Cannons guarding the inner Forbidden Purple City


Ngo Mon - Noon Gate




Dien Thai Hoa (Palace of Supreme Harmony)


Royal Incense Burner



Hien Lam Cac - Hien Lam Pavilion


Cuu Dinh - Nine Dynastic Urns of Eternity


Cung Dien Tho (Palace of Longevity) - Queen Mother's residence

[Saigonese]

Inner wall Palace Gates


Dragon Stair


Royal Pavilion


Newly restored hall

[versalvin]

I have always wonder why sometimes the palace is translated to forbidden "PURPLE" city......i believed it has nothing to do with the color purple.....?

[Saigonese]

Purple is the color that was symbolically attributed Sao Bac Dau (the North Star). The naming of the Imperial residence as such implies that it was the cosmic centre of the universe.

[aznboi]

i don't know about dat. but my grandmom told me that. before the vietnamese war... most of the school in Hue.....all girls have to wear traditional clothes but only in purple color. and made hue are purple.

[Saigoneseguy]

wonderful pics....but i think there's a large area within the citadel is still in very bad conditions,ruined from the war and nothign has changed since then....

[Saigonese]

Yeah a significant part of the FPC is badly ruined or totally razed to the ground as a result of the 1947 battle with the French and the 1968 Tet offensive. Something like 70-80% of the whole complex is ruined beyond recognition.

The problem is that we don't have the money (or rather maybe a lack of effort by the authorities) to restore those buildings to their former glory like what's been done in China, Korea or Japan. Although there are buildings and gates currently being restored, like the last one shown above.

[Pangu]

That's interesting, the Chinese imperial palace in Beijing built in 1422 is called 紫禁城 Zijin Cheng, which literally means "Purple Forbidden City".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City

The Forbidden City (Chinese: 紫禁城; pinyin: Zǐjìn Chéng; literally "Purple Forbidden City"), located at the exact center of the ancient City of Beijing, was the imperial palace during the mid-Ming and the Qing dynasties.

Also, Beijing's Forbidden City is mostly in red and gold as well so I wouldn't know why "purple" was in the name either.



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Anyway, I find Vietnam's Forbidden City to be quite beautiful It's too bad that it appears to be damaged during the war. Are there any pictures of the Vietnamese Forbidden City during its heydays?

[tq]

I´ve heard the government is cooporating with UNESO to reconstr and expand "the forbidden city" untill 2020. Is that right?

[versalvin]

Man the Chinese Imperial Palace is awesome....would love to visit it someday too

[Saigonese]

Well restoration work is currently being carried out but I'm not sure whether they'll rebuilt the buildings that were totally razed to the ground or not. The main issue is still funding.

The small replica of the entire Purple Forbidden City complex looks quite awesome.

[waterloo]

Very beautiful! It has this mysterious atmosphere that I cannot describe.

[versalvin]

Hope the Complex will be totally renovated soon...
This is the model of the entire complex..

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[Saigon_Skyline]

Nice pics!

[Matthieu]

Very nice indeed. Rebuilding palaces and old buildings is often bloody expensive.

[k2]

wow, really lovely, looks really similar to chinese style, probably because chinese ruled vietnam for ages before, but how come it's seems so old? is it becaz of the vietnam war??
i really love this palace, nice one

[coolink]

no

[Pangu]

Originally Posted by k2

wow, really lovely, looks really similar to chinese style, probably because chinese ruled vietnam for ages before, but how come it's seems so old? is it becaz of the vietnam war??
i really love this palace, nice one

The whole East Asian architecture, namely Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are all heavily influenced by Chinese architecture. However, over time, they developed their own distinct (more or less) variations. Also, the fact that each of those cultures were heavily influenced by China during different periods also further contributed to their distinction. For example, Japanese architecture is more similar to Tang dynasty Chinese architecture while Vietnamese architecture (at least those left standing) tend to be more similar to Ming / Qing dynasty Chinese achitecture.

Originally Posted by bang

I read that Vietnam wants to rebuild the complex and return it to it's orginal glory.......But, always a but..........the Unesco said that if Vietnam were to rebuild everything they will take away the title "world heritage site" because they want the palace to keep the destroyed parts of the palace , because it's also part of history

That makes sense...

[k2]

ya, so we are all in 漢字文化圈, right?

[Pangu]

Originally Posted by k2

ya, so we are all in 漢字文化圈, right?

More like 大中華文化圈 because we share much more than just Hanzi.