who can explain me why the Chinese Forbidden city was built as it is now?

Answer 1

There were so many considerations in the construction of the Forbidden City, that's it's hard to answer a really general question like this in a limited space. The short, short version is - it's a palace.

It was built during a somewhat tumultuous time of Chinese history and by a usurper at that. Zhu Li thus has a great need of two things: safety and legitimacy. To satisfy the first, there are layers of defenses... thick walls, moats, solid gates, and tall towers. To satisfy the second, he made it the biggest palace in the world (some esitmate that it took 200,000 men 14 years to build it).

Some of the more odd features of its construction are to satisfy numerology and feng shui. For example, all the buildings have five rooms, except the library which has six. The sixth room is to evoke the element of water (thus preventing fires), and is constructed REALLY small so there isn't much of an obvious difference between the library and the other buildings. Likewise, feng shui dictates that it is favourable to live south of a hill... so Zhu Li had the workers BUILD a hill for his palace to be south of. Likewise, it's directly to the east of one of the old palaces to cancel the influence of the old house.

Hope that helps! There's lots of information out there!

Answer 2

The best way to understand this is to see a movie Named " The Last Emperor " by Italian Director Bertilucchi.