The Clock Gallery, The Forbidden City, Beijing

The Clock Gallery is situated in a very large, beautiful building on the eastern side of the Forbidden City. I like clocks, but was totally unprepared for the number and variety of clocks in the collection, or the beauty of all of them.

   

   

Most of the clocks were made in Europe, and a large number were made in England in the 17th century. Animals figure largely in the clocks, especially elephants. Elephants seemed to be the theme for me on this holiday, everywhere we went we saw elephants, but they are amazing animals so it was lovely to see them everywhere.

       

We spent a long time looking at, and taking photos of the clocks, but most of the photos in this blog were taken through glass, so may not be the best quality. We did notice that all the clocks were dusty, which is a great pity, but the dust did not detract from the beauty of them.

The top four parts of the roof on this one all moved up and down like a telescope

The three photos above were all part of a display of automated clocks, they all did something novel, with moving parts etc. Lovely to see.

 

Elephant feet.. 

Phoenix and Tiger on this one.

       

Elephants

       

       

Finally the largest clock we saw…

The Nine Dragon Screen, The Forbidden City.

This is a very quick blog, just the photos of the amazing dragons in the Nine Dragon Screen, in the Forbidden City. The first one reminds me a little bit of me……..lol

The dragons from left to right, aren’t they amazing?

The Forbidden City revisited

This is one of three blogs about the Forbidden City. Followers of my blog will remember my first visit to the Forbidden City way back in 2011. Check out my blog of June 2011 if you want to refresh your memory  

I have the same photo taken last time I was here on the bridge, but believe me it is just one of those places that just begs to have its photo taken again!!

I had said to Alice that I wouldn’t mind going back to the Forbidden City if we had the time, as it happened Alice also wanted to go back. We both wanted to see different things in the city, and I felt that last time I was there we had just scraped the surface of this beautiful place.

We intended setting off early, but that did not happen, but at least it had cooled off a bit for our visit, it was only 29 degrees that day! We asked the taxi driver to take us to the Forbidden City, but he dropped us at we thought was the North Gate into the City. We were outside the walls of the city with the moat surrounding the city. Neither of us had seen the moat so it was nice to see. We could see that if we walked alongside the wall we would eventually get to the South Gate (opposite Tiananmen Square) which is the only entrance to the City, so we meandered slowly along by the City Wall. We had not gone very far and were expecting a long walk to the gate, when we came upon an entrance to the City. We had, in fact, been dropped by the West Gate, so entered the entrance courtyard by this gate which took us to the ticket offices bypassing the Tiananmen Square gate.

I think it is fair to say that The Forbidden City simply takes your breath away with its beauty, it size, and the feeling of history that can be found there. Being July there were a lot more visitors than the last time I was there, and sadly for Alice the main buildings were not open, so she still has not seen inside the Halls that I saw on my last visit! Our main aim this visit was the Nine Dragon Wall which I wanted to see, and the Gallery of Clocks and Watches that Alice wanted to see so we headed to the lesser buildings in the East of the City. I am unable to name any of the buildings I took photos of, so hope you will forgive me for that, and just enjoy the photos as they are. We still have not seen all of the City, maybe if I go back to Beijing again one day, we will see even more of this fantastic place. Hopefully there won’t be quite so many people next time

There will be separate blogs on the Nine Dragon Wall and the Clock Gallery in following blogs, but for now I hope you will enjoy the re-visit to the wonderful Forbidden City.