Many people know that Beijing is known as the ancient capital of the Five Dynasties, which means that there are five dynasties that have chosen the capital or capital of the country in Beijing. The five dynasties were: Liao Dynasty, Jin Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty. Therefore, in the city of Beijing, it is natural to leave many historical marks on these five dynasties. We all know that today's Forbidden City was called the Forbidden City in ancient times, and it was the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties. However, with the deepening of the archaeological excavation of the Forbidden City, experts found that the Original Forbidden City was not only the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, but also the location of the Imperial Palace of the Yuan Dynasty also highly overlapped with the Forbidden City.
In 1964, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a small-scale drilling in the Forbidden City. The earthworks taken out of the Wenhua Hall and the Wuying Hall prove that the east-west parallel line between the Wenhua and Wuying Halls should be the Jinshui River of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace. The data obtained by the institute from Jingshan and Di'anmen Bridge and other places proves that the central axis of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace is the central axis of the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The location of the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing dynasties is souther than the location of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace. For example, the current Taihe Hall (known as the Fengtian Hall in the Ming Dynasty) is located in the Chongtian Gate (the main gate of the Imperial Palace, equivalent to the Noon Gate of the Forbidden City) of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace; the current Jingshan Was still part of the Imperial Palace during the Yuan Dynasty, when there was Yanchun Pavilion under the Jingshan Mountain, which was the residence of the Empress of the Yuan Dynasty. Overall, most of the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing dynasties coincided highly with the location of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace, especially the central axis did not change at all. In other words, the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace is actually under the Forbidden City.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, a book called "The Aftermath of The Dreams of Chunming" recorded the Forbidden City as follows: "Yongle rebuilt the imperial city in fifteen years, went east to a mile, and was as grand as the system of Jinling. Many people use this as a basis to believe that the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing Dynasties should be a mile east of the Imperial Palace of the Yuan Dynasty, but do not know that the reference to the "one mile to the east" referred to here is not the Imperial Palace of the Yuan Dynasty, but the West Palace of the Ming Dynasty, that is, the former site of the Yan King's Palace before The Ming Dynasty Ancestor Zhu Di ascended the throne.
Having said all this, I think everyone should understand the general location of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace. Then there is another question, why did the Ming Dynasty not build on the basis of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace when it built the Forbidden City, but to tear it down and start over? You know, no matter how to renovate and expand, the cost is much lower than the cost of tearing down and restarting. During Zhu Di's reign, the Ming Dynasty was not rich, so why not try to save a little money on the construction of the imperial palace? The answer is twofold.
First of all, the ancients were very superstitious, and they often thought that if a regime could rise, there must be some mysterious force behind it. Therefore, when the two forces are at war, in addition to the short contact between the soldiers on the battlefield, the small actions behind each other are also very frequent, such as digging each other's ancestral graves, hoping to break the mysterious power behind the other side. Zhu Di believes that the reason why the Yuan Dynasty was able to determine the Central Plains must be inseparable from the favor of heaven and the blessings of the ancestors. Therefore, by building the Forbidden City on top of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace, you can suppress the Dragon Vein of the Yuan Dynasty and let the other party step on the feet of the Great Tomorrow Son for all lifetimes.
Secondly, Zhu Di was a good emperor. Whatever he decides to do, he never cares about how much it costs, but only whether it is in line with his wishes. Therefore, in the major event of building the Forbidden City, Zhu Di's request was to do the most expensive and the best with the strength of the country. Wanted the Yongle Emperor to live in the former imperial palace? There are no doors.
It is worth mentioning that there is a theory that the Yuan Imperial Palace was destroyed in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, so Zhu Di had to build a new Forbidden City. However, according to the mutual corroboration of historical materials such as the "Records of the Yuan Palace" and the "Records of the Ancestral Teachings", it can be concluded that the Imperial Palace of the Yuan Dynasty still existed in the early years of Yongle. Therefore, it was Zhu Di who demolished the Yuan Dynasty Palace, not his father Zhu Yuanzhang.
Then again, the Forbidden City was built on top of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace, and the purpose of suppressing the Dragon Vein of the Yuan Dynasty was achieved? After all, in the Ariake Dynasty, the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty were weakening day by day. However, this place eventually became the end of the Ming Dynasty itself.
In March of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Li Zicheng, the "King of Chuang", led a rebel army to attack Beijing. The last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Youjian, martyred himself at Coal Mountain (present-day Jingshan), and the Ming Dynasty fell. The place where Zhu You was martyred also happened to be the core area of the harem of the Yuan Dynasty.
References: Records of the Yuan Palace, Records of ancestral training, History of the Ming Dynasty