File photo of an excavation at the Taiji Hall at the imperial palace of the Han and Wei dynasties in Luoyang, Henan Province. (Photo/Xinhua)
8. CHINA'S OLDEST PALACE
The ruins of Taiji Hall in Luoyang City in central China's Henan Province are part of China's oldest palace.
The hall is the central part of the imperial palace of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-557).
Archaeologists have cleared 3,000 square meters of the ruins and worked out the scale, range and structure of the palace building. They estimate that the original palace might have covered an area of 100,000 square meters.
Taiji Hall is composed of a central main hall and two side halls each in the east and west. The palace building has been replicated ever since in building imperial palaces through the Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, even spreading to East Asia and beyond.
