The palace quarter , just inside the mountain resort to the west of the main gate, is built on a slope, facing south, and consists of four groups of dark wooden buildings spread over an area of 100,000 square metres. The first, southernmost group, the Front Palace , where the emperors lived and worked, is the most interesting, as many of the rooms have been restored to their full Qing elegance, decked out with graceful furniture and ornaments. Even the everyday objects are impressive: brushes and inkstones on desks, ornate fly whisks on the arms of chairs, little jade trees on shelves. Other rooms house displays of ceramics, books, and exotic martial art weaponry. The Qing emperors were fine calligraphers, and examples of their work appear throughout the palace.

There are twenty-six buildings in this group, arranged south to north in nine successive compounds which correspond to the nine levels of heaven. The main gate, or Lizhengmen , leads into the Outer Wumen , where high-ranking officials waited for a single peal of a large bell, indicating that the emperor was ready to receive them. Next is the Inner Wumen , where the emperor would watch his officers practise their archery. Directly behind, the Hall of Frugality and Sincerity is a dark, well-appointed room made of cedar wood, imported at great expense from south of the Yangzi by Qianlong, who had none of his grandfather Kangxi's scruples about conspicuous consumption. The hall has nine bays and is topped with a curved roof. Patterns on the walls include symbols of longevity and good luck. The Four Knowledge Study Room , behind, was where the emperor did his ordinary work, changed his clothes and rested. A vertical scroll on the wall outlines the four knowledges required of a gentleman, as written in the Chinese classics: he must be aware of what is small, obvious, soft and strong. It's more spartanly furnished, a little more intimate and less imposing than the other rooms.

The main building in the Rear Palace is the Hall of Refreshing Mists and Waves , the living quarters of the imperial family, where Emperor Xianfeng signed the humiliating Beijing Treaty in the 1850s, giving away more of China's sovereignty and territory after their defeat in the Second Opium War. The Western Apartments are where the notorious Cixi, better known as the Dowager Empress , lived when she was one of Xianfeng's concubines. A door connects the apartments to the hall, and it was through here that she eavesdropped on the dying emperor's last words of advice to his ministers, intelligence she used to help to force herself into power. The courtyard of the Rear Palace has a good souvenir shop, inside an old Buddhist tower which you reach by climbing a staircase by the rockery.

The other two complexes are much smaller. The Pine and Crane Residence , a group of buildings parallel to the front gate, is a more subdued version of the Front Palace, home to the emperor's mother and his concubines. In the Myriad Valleys of Rustling Pine Trees , to the north of here, Emperor Kangxi read books and granted audiences, and Qianlong studied as a child. The group of structures southwest of the main palace is the Ahgesuo , where during the Manchurian rule, male descendants of the royal family studied; lessons began at 5am and finished at noon. A boy was expected to speak Manchu at six, Chinese at twelve, be competent with a bow by the age of fourteen, and married at sixteen.