A Palace Laid Out as a Diagram

The Forbidden City is arranged on a north to south axis with the principal halls set one behind another along it, courts opening between them, and the emperor's seat placed on the line. That is not a taste in symmetry. Chinese cosmological thinking placed the pole star at the fixed centre of the sky with the other stars turning about it, and the imperial capital was built to put the ruler in the corresponding position on earth, so that a subject approaching the throne moved along the meridian towards a fixed point.

Sources of Chinese Tradition collects the classical texts in which that correspondence between the order of heaven and the order of the state is argued out, and it is the framework within which the palace plan makes sense. The emperor's religious function followed from it. He was the one person entitled to make the great sacrifices, and the ritual year required him to leave the palace for the altars outside it, to Heaven at the winter solstice, to Earth, and to the gods of soil and grain, with fasting and preparation beforehand. The name records the same logic from the other side. Access to the ritual centre was restricted, and the restriction was part of what made it a centre.