The Cold Palace in the Forbidden City is off-limits to tourists for these two reasons.

If you often watch historical dramas, you must have heard of the Cold Palace. This is the place used to confine concubines who committed crimes or fell out of favor. If they were sent to the Cold Palace, it meant that the concubine would no longer receive respect from her servants. Moreover, most of the people who were sent to the Cold Palace would not have a good ending. Therefore, the Cold Palace was considered the most unlucky place in the Forbidden City.

Where is the Cold Palace located in the Forbidden City?

The Forbidden City is a palace complex built in an area of up to 720,000 square meters. The Forbidden City has up to 800 palaces and 9,999 rooms. Although there are many palaces, in fact, in the Forbidden City, there is no specific location for the cold palace. In the records of the Ming and Qing dynasties, there is no document mentioning the "cold palace", meaning that this name does not refer to a specific palace.

The Cold Palace in the Forbidden City is forbidden to tourists for these two reasons - 1 — The Cold Palace in the Forbidden City is the general name for the place where concubines were imprisoned. (Photo: Sohu)

The last Qing emperor, Pu Yi, revealed in his memoirs that there was no place in the Forbidden City called the Cold Palace. The Cold Palace was simply a general term for the places where concubines were kept. It was not a fixed palace, but could be any room used to keep concubines. The common point of the Cold Palace was that it was remote, isolated, and not renovated, far from the main palace.

For example, during the late Ming Dynasty, Imperial Concubine Li was imprisoned in the western room of the Imperial Flower Garden during the reign of Emperor Guangxu. During the reign of Emperor Guangxu, Imperial Concubine Zhen was imprisoned in the northern part of the Jingqi Palace.

So it can be understood that depending on the dynasty, the cold palace was in different locations.

Reasons why tourists should not visit the cold palace

Today, the Forbidden City has become the Palace Museum, a famous tourist destination in China. Every day, it welcomes many visitors. However, according to the Palace Museum's regulations, the cold palace is not open to visitors. Why is that?

The Cold Palace in the Forbidden City is forbidden for tourists to visit for these two reasons - 2 — The cold palace does not welcome visitors. (Photo: Sohu)

Representatives of the Palace Museum gave two reasons to explain this problem.

Firstly, the cold palace affects people's emotions. Specifically, the cold palace was used to confine concubines. Concubines and palace maids who were exiled here would be isolated from the world , with little chance of seeing the outside world. Therefore, many people fell into a state of depression and deadlock.

Over time, people locked in the cold palace can become depressed, even go crazy and seek death. The cold palace has “witnessed” many sad memories, one could say scary. These things can affect visitors, so the cold palace has become a “forbidden land”.

Second, visiting the cold palace could be dangerous for tourists. According to Pu Yi’s explanation, the cold palaces were all very dilapidated places because they had not been repaired by the emperors. The imperial palace was too large, and the imperial court decided not to waste money repairing abandoned palaces.

As a result, the once-desolate cold palaces became even more dilapidated and damaged. The management board of the Palace Museum, in order to ensure the safety of visitors, decided to close the cold palaces and other old, dilapidated places.

Quoc Thai (Source: Sohu)

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