The Palace Museum (Forbidden City) 故宫博物院 · AAAAA景区,博物馆

That red wall has endured centuries of wind, sun, and rain, yet its color remains as pure and vivid as ever. Many people assume it has been repainted, but it actually uses a mineral formula passed down from our ancestors. The secret to the red wall's fade-resistant color lies in natural mineral pigments like cinnabar.

Mineral colors are still in use—don't assume they exist only in the Palace Museum. Chinese painting restoration, thangka, and high-end mineral pigment painting still use azurite, malachite, and cinnabar today; some refined antique-style architecture and cultural relic restoration also insist on mineral pigments, precis

Just cataloging these artifacts took many years, and there are exact records. So when many people first step inside, what strikes them most isn't the palace gates and halls, but the items displayed in the cases: the gold crown the emperor wore to court, the hat finial inlaid with precious stones, the marten fur court c