Don't just visit the Forbidden City when you come to Beijing! Highly recommend this hidden gem, the Imperial Ancestral Temple!

The moment you step into the Hall of Enjoyment in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, I finally understood what "understated luxury" means. Although the exterior of the Imperial Ancestral Temple is already at a royal level, the shock inside is multiplied by a hundred times! Inside the hall are 68 towering golden Phoebe zhennan wood pillars, each emitting a dim glow and a faint woody fragrance. Even the air you breathe feels ancient and full of stories.
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When you step on the ground, don’t be careless. Under your feet are the same "golden bricks" as those in the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, each worth the price of a house! There is also the Chinese Harmony Bell cast for the millennium. Standing beneath it, you can almost hear echoes crossing through time.
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⭕️ Practical Tips:
✔️ Officially certified as the "Number One Temple Under Heaven"
✔️ Taller than the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, this is where emperors worshipped their ancestors, so the atmosphere is absolutely majestic
✔️ The 68 large pillars inside are all made from whole golden Phoebe zhennan wood, the tallest reaching 13.32 meters and the widest 1.2 meters in diameter. The value of these pillars alone is astronomical
✔️ While tickets to the Forbidden City are hard to get, here you only need to spend the equivalent of a bubble tea to quietly appreciate the royal top-tier aesthetics
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📍 Address: East side of Tiananmen, Beijing Working People's Cultural Palace (the Imperial Ancestral Temple is inside)
🎫 Tickets: Main gate ticket ¥2, entry to the core "mansion" Hall of Enjoyment is ¥15
⏰ Opening hours: Cultural Palace 6:30-19:30; Hall of Enjoyment 9:00-16:30 (closed on Mondays, don’t come empty-handed)

Post by MoonbeamJourney123 | Oct 25, 2025