5Keep Out: The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City is an incredibly impressive eight million square-foot complex of red-walled buildings and pavilions topped by a sea of glazed vermilion tile. The trim is all done in bright green, blue, yellow, black and white. It’s so huge that it dwarfs the adjacent Tiananmen Square. The original palace was built starting in 1406. Logs shipped from the south for construction took up to four years to arrive in Beijing.

The palace receives more visitors than any other attraction in the country (the Chinese government reports over seven million a year).