Who designed the Old Summer Palace? Who built the Old Summer Palace

Emperor Yongzheng. He was the first chief designer of the Old Summer Palace. In 1723, when he began to expand the Old Summer Palace, he also set up a special design institute in the Old Summer Palace, the Ruyi Pavilion, which was the Royal Academy of Painting at that time.

There, a group of excellent court painters gathered, and their task was to paint the emperor's description into a Chinese painting that was both realistic and freehand.

Presented to the Emperor, the Emperor nodded, and the first draft of their design was approved.

Emperor Yongzheng had a great sense of art and was particularly fond of the Old Summer Palace, and he never went out on tour after he succeeded to the throne, and lived in the Old Summer Palace for almost all the 13 years he was emperor. To this end, he also developed a hobby, that is, wearing strange costumes, dressing up all kinds of people, etc., and swaggering around the city in the Old Summer Palace. In the end, he also died in the Old Summer Palace.

Under the leadership of Emperor Yongzheng, the design of the Old Summer Palace was deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture.

The aesthetic taste is engraved everywhere with the ideal and will of the chief designer Yongzheng - a poetic and picturesque water town in the south of the Yangtze River in the heart of the emperor.

and spiritual home.

By 1737, Emperor Qianlong.

moved into the Old Summer Palace and became the second chief designer, and presided over the second renovation and expansion project of the Old Summer Palace, which lasted for 17 years. Emperor Qianlong reigned for 60 years, and built the Old Summer Palace year after year, repaired it every day, dredged water and moved stones, and spent tens of millions of silver. In addition to the partial addition and reconstruction of the Old Summer Palace, Qianlong built a new Changchun Garden in the east around the sixteenth year of Qianlong, and merged it into the Qichun Garden in the southeast (renamed Wanchun Garden in the Tongzhi period).

Around 12 to 25 years, the western building scenic spot was built. In the 39th year of Qianlong, the pattern of the Three Gardens of the Old Ming Dynasty was basically formed. So what we call the Old Summer Palace today actually includes the three gardens of Yuanming, Changchun and Qichun, referred to as the Three Gardens of the Old Ming Palace.

Qianlong was an emperor who advocated luxury and loved to eat, drink and have fun, and visited Jiangnan many times in his life, and the beautiful scenery of Jiangnan became his inspiration for the design of the Old Summer Palace, so the famous "Forty Views of the Old Summer Palace" was formed. Qianlong was also curious about Western culture, so he gave in and out of the court's painters, Italian missionaries.

Lang Shining, the Frenchman Wang Zhicheng and Jiang Youren designed a group of European-style garden buildings for him - Western Mansion Scenic Area. The Western-style building is most famous for its fantastical European-style fountains, which a European missionary who witnessed praised as comparable to the Palace of Versailles in France.

Comparable. After the Three Gardens of the Old Ming Dynasty began to take shape, Emperor Jiaqing.

The Qichun Garden is mainly repaired and expanded, making it one of the main garden places. Between 1799 and 1811, he merged the two royal gardens into the Qichun Garden, and began a new round of large-scale renovation and expansion, which was also the heyday of the Three Yuan Ming Gardens.

The horse head of the Old Summer Palace officially returned, designed by Italian Lang Shining.

The Old Summer Palace, also known as the Three Gardens of the Old Ming Palace, is a large royal garden of the Qing Dynasty, it is located in the northwest suburbs of Beijing, adjacent to the Summer Palace, composed of the Old Summer Palace, the Changchun Garden and the Qichun Garden, so it is also called the Three Gardens of the Old Ming Palace. In addition, there are many small gardens, distributed on the east, west and south sides, surrounded by stars and moons. [1]

It covers an area of square kilometers, with a construction area of 200,000 square meters and more than 150 sections, and is known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens". [2] The Qing Emperor came here every midsummer to escape the summer, listen to the government, and deal with military and political affairs, so it was also called the "summer palace".

The Old Summer Palace was founded in 1709 (the 48th year of Kangxi), and was originally a gift from Emperor Kangxi to Yinzhen, the fourth son of the emperor. After Yongzheng ascended the throne in 1722, he expanded the original garden, and added the Zhengda Guangming Hall and the Qinzheng Hall in the south of the garden, as well as many duty rooms of the cabinet, the six ministries and the military aircraft department, hoping to "avoid the noise and listen to the government" in summer. During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, in addition to the partial addition and reconstruction of the Old Summer Palace, he also built a new Changchun Garden in the east and merged it into the Wanchun Garden in the southeast.

3] The pattern of the Three Yuan Ming Gardens was basically formed. In the Jiaqing Dynasty, the Qichun Garden (Wanchun Garden) was mainly repaired and expanded, making it one of the main garden places. During the reign of Emperor Daoguang, the state affairs were declining day by day, and the financial resources were insufficient, but he would rather withdraw the furnishings of the "three mountains" of Wanshou, Xiangshan and Yuquan, and do not give up the renovation and decoration of the three gardens of the Old Ming Dynasty.

On October 6, 1860, the British and French troops ransacked the Old Summer Palace, looted cultural relics, burned them, and wanted to restore them when the Tongzhi Emperor wanted to restore them, but due to financial difficulties, they were forced to stop and rebuild other buildings. After the Eight-Nation Alliance, it was attacked by bandits and finally turned into ruins.

The Old Summer Palace is a large royal garden in the Qing Dynasty, which was built in 1707, that is, in the 46th year of Kangxi, in 1860, the British and French troops sacked the Old Summer Palace and burned it. The Old Summer Palace existed for a total of 153 years, and every emperor of the Qing Dynasty would expand the Old Summer Palace or add some treasures to the Old Summer Palace. Therefore, by the time of destruction, the construction area of the Old Summer Palace had reached 200,000 square meters, with more than 150 scenes, and at least more than 1.5 million treasures in the garden.

So what damage did the Old Summer Palace suffer? In fact, the Old Summer Palace was completely destroyed, a fire burned for three days and three nights, and in the end all that was left was a ruin. In fact, after the British and French forces burned down the Old Summer Palace, the Tongzhi Emperor also wanted to restore the Old Summer Palace, but because of the financial constraints, the repair silver was stopped a few days later.

So how much damage did the British and French forces loot and burn the Old Summer Palace at that time, and caused China more? First of all, the Old Summer Palace was founded and operated by the Qing Dynasty for more than 150 years, and its scale is very large, even not losing to the Forbidden City, which is not only the painstaking efforts of several generations of emperors, but also a museum of treasures all over China. But in the end, they were all snatched away by the British and French forces, and according to Kuanbo, many soldiers of the British and French forces at that time, after snatching these treasures from China, returned to China and became rich directly.

In this regard, many experts have also done special research, after the burning of the Old Summer Palace, the loss of the house alone is as high as 6 million taels**, of course, this does not include the treasures in the Old Summer Palace. Because many of the treasures in the Old Summer Palace are priceless, they can't be measured by money at all. At present, these treasures are scattered all over the world, some are collected by wealthy Western merchants, and some may be in museums.

All in all, it's impossible to recover these things, at least for now. It is understood that among these lost treasures, there are bronzes from the Western Zhou Dynasty, porcelain vases from various dynasties, and various celebrity calligraphy and paintings. Especially during the period of Emperor Qianlong, because Qianlong was particularly fond of celebrity calligraphy and painting, he hid a lot of calligraphy and painting in the Old Summer Palace at that time.

I didn't expect these precious cultural relics to eventually fall into the hands of the Western powers, and what is even more hateful is that the Western powers directly smashed some cultural relics that could not be taken away, and finally set fire to the Old Summer Palace.

The introduction and historical background of the Old Summer Palace are as follows:

1. The construction time of the Old Summer Palace: it was built in 1709 (the forty-eighth year of Kangxi), and was basically completed in 1809, which lasted a century, and then Jiaqing, Daoguang and Xianfeng three generations have been repeatedly repaired and expanded, which lasted more than 150 years.

2. Historical background: The Old Summer Palace was built on the site of a private garden of the Ming Dynasty given by Emperor Kangxi to the fourth son of Yinzhen, after Yinzhen ascended the throne as Emperor Yongzheng, it was expanded into the palace where the emperor lived for a long time, and it was expanded again during the Qianlong period, and was completed in the ninth year of Qianlong (1744).

During the Qianlong Dynasty, it was the last prosperous period of China's feudal society, Qianlong gathered the skilled craftsmen of the whole country to expand and build the Old Summer Palace on an unprecedented scale, in addition to the partial addition, reconstruction and improvement of the famous "Forty Views of the Old Summer Palace", but also built Changchun and other gardens in the east.

To the 35th year of Qianlong (1770), the pattern of Yuanming, Changchun and Qichun three gardens was basically formed, the whole garden is 2620 meters wide from east to west, 1880 meters long from north to south, and the total length of the periphery is about 11000 meters, covering an area of 350 hectares, of which the water surface is about 140 hectares.

The Old Summer Palace is not only famous for its gardens, but also a royal museum, which is a rare cultural and artistic treasure house in the world at that time, showing the essence of China's ancient feudal culture, and at the same time collecting a variety of extremely rich books, cultural relics and art treasures.

Floor space. The Old Summer Palace covers an area of more than 350 hectares, of which the water surface area is about 140 hectares, and the land construction area of the Old Summer Palace is 10,000 square meters more than that of the Forbidden City, and the water area is equal to a Summer Palace, and the total area is equal to the Forbidden City.

The Old Summer Palace is surrounded by 10 kilometers and is composed of the Old Summer Palace, Qichun Garden and Changchun Garden, and the Old Summer Palace is the largest, so it is collectively called the Old Summer Palace (also known as the Three Yuan Ming Palaces). In addition, there are many subordinate gardens, distributed in the east, west and south of the Old Summer Palace, including the Jingyi Garden of Xiangshan, the Jingming Garden of Yuquan Mountain, the Qingyi Garden (the later Summer Palace was built on this basis), etc., with a total area of more than 5,000 acres.