Research On The Architecture Of Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing

The imperial ancestral temple in Beijing is the very spot for emperors to perform thesacrificial rites in the Ming and Qing dynasty. With its deep cultural meaning, It has high culturaland aesthetic values. By working up how the Chinese ancients concepts about the death, and how every emperorused this ritual to assert his royal authority, this paper lay emphasis on the reason why this form oftemples were passed on as the body of worship culture. Furthermore, on the basis of historical records and site survey, the architecture of the imperialancestral temple has been synthetically studied from the aspects of the architectural evolution, theway of layout, the design of space and structure, and sacrificial rites in history. Thus, the values ofthe imperial ancestral temple, which is the elaborate works in the Chinese ancient times, havebeen profoundly reflected.