Yuanminyuan ( Chinese trad. 圓明園 , Ex . 圆明园 , Pinyin : Yuánmíngyuán , “gardens of perfect clarity”), also known as “Old Summer Palace” and “Winter Palace” [1] - the garden-palace complex destroyed in 1860 , located 8 km north-west of the Forbidden City , east of the surviving Summer Palace of Emperor Qianlong . In Yuanmingyuan, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty spent most of their time visiting the Forbidden City mainly for formal receptions.
The construction of the imperial gardens began in 1707 on the orders of Emperor Kangxi , who planned to donate them to his son Yongzhen . It was Yongzheng who invented the names for the park objects, and also decorated it with numerous reservoirs. His successor, Qianlong, erected several European-style palaces (“Western buildings,” or radiance ), designed by Jesuits Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoit [2] . Under Qianlong, the garden area was 5 times the size of the Forbidden City, 8 times the size of the Vatican .
The Summer Palace was destroyed by the British and French who captured Beijing at the end of the Second Opium War . The Chinese did not begin to restore the Old Summer Palace. He remained in ruins - as a symbol of national humiliation. No less humiliating in China consider the demonstration of art from the palace in European museums. The priceless collection of porcelain and other contents of the palace on the orders of [3] Lord Elgin were plundered. Participating in the destruction of Charles George Gordon wrote: "You can hardly imagine the beauty and splendor of the palace burned by us ... We destroyed, like the vandals, an estate so valuable that it could not be restored even for four million" [4] .
Victor Hugo, in a letter to Captain Butler of November 25, 1861, wrote about England and France as [5] [6] :
One day, two gangsters broke into the Summer Palace. One looted it, another set fire to it ... One of the winners filled his pockets, another, looking at him, filled the chests; and both, hand in hand, satisfied returned to Europe.
Original text (fr.)Un jour, deux bandits sont entrés dans le Palais d'été. L'un a pillé, l'autre a incendié ... L'un des deux vainqueurs a empli ses poches, ce que voyant, l'autre a empli ses coffres; et l'on est revenu en Europe, bras dessus, bras dessous, en riant.
Reports periodically appear in the press about plans to restore the palace to its original form [7] , but so far only its miniature copy has been rebuilt in the southern city of Zhuhai .
Notes
- ↑ How many Chinese cultural treasures "lost" overseas?
- Ow Who Owns Antiquity ?: Google Books
- ↑ MA Aldrich. The Search for a Vanishing Beijing . Hong Kong University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-962-209-777-3 . Page 268.
- ↑ The Making of Google Post Books
- ↑ Victor Hugo. Military expedition to China. Translated by T. Khmelnitsky // Collected Works in 15 Volumes. - M .: State publishing house of fiction , 1956. - T. 15: Cases and speeches. - p. 360-362.
- ↑ Oeuvres complètes de Victor Hugo. Actes et paroles . - Paris, 1938. - Vol. Ii. Pendant l'exil. 1852-1870. - P. 162.
- ↑ The main part of the former imperial residence of Yuanmingyuan, in its former form, was opened for tourists for the first time in more than 300 years (inaccessible link) . The appeal date is August 16, 2008. Archived September 26, 2011
Links
- Yuanmingyuan : Wikimedia Commons Media
- Site of the Museum of the Imperial Gardens