The Temple of Heaven is situated in the south of Beijing, about 2.5 km away from Tiananmen Square, the center of Beijing. It was first built in 1420 during the time when the Forbidden City and some other important imperial structures were constructed. As a Taoist temple, the Temple of Heaven is not only the largest group of temple buildings in China, but also the largest heaven worshipping architecture in the world. It covers an area of 273 hectares, 1,700 meters from east to west and 1,600 meters from south to north, which is three times larger than the Forbidden City. The reason that it is much larger than the Forbidden City is because the Chinese Emperor used to regard himself as “Son of Heaven”. So they dared not to build their own house “Forbidden City” larger than the dwelling for the “God of Heaven”. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Temple of Heaven was the place where the emperor came to worship the God of Heaven and pray for a good harvest each year. Normally they went there twice a year. On the 15th day of the first lunar month and on Winter Solstice to pray for a good harvest and worship the God of Heaven respectively. If there happened to be a drought, he would also go to the Temple of Heaven to pray for rain on Summer Solstice.
When Emperor Zhudi decided to move the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, the construction of the Forbidden City was started in 1406. At the same time, he chose to build a heaven worshipping altar in this area, which is about 2.5 km to the southeast of the Front Gate in Tiananmen Square. Originally, the Temple of Heaven was called Temple of Heaven and Earth, because it was built according to the Temple of Heaven and Earth in Nanjing, the former Ming Capital at that time, so heaven and earth were both worshipped here. In 1530, after the Temple of Earth was built in the northern part of Beijing, then Heaven and Earth were worshipped separately. Since only Heaven was worshipped here, it was renamed as the Temple of Heaven. From 1421 to 1530, there were altogether nine Ming emperors who held the worshipping ceremony of both heaven and earth for over a hundred times. The worshipping ceremony was mainly for the God of Heaven, secondarily for ancestors of the emperor, as well as for the Gods of the Sun, the Moon, the stars, wind, thunder and lightning.
The Temple of Heaven was a sacred place in the minds of ancient Chinese. People believed that it was the place to convey their wishes to the God of Heaven. In ancient China, the traditional belief was that, everything, no matter good fortune or bad fortune, happiness or disaster, stability or troubled times, was all related to and controlled by the God of Heaven. All the Chinese Emperors paid strong veneration to the God of Heaven, for they believed that he could dominate and dictate everything in the human world. In order to convince people that their imperial divine power was conferred on them by the God of Heaven, they showed great concern over the rituals of the Heavenly worshipping. At that time, the emperor was regarded as the “Son of Heaven”. Any natural disasters, bad harvests or instability in society were signs that the emperor had lost favor with the God of Heaven or being punished by him. Hence, ceremonies for sacrifices to Heaven were extremely important to the imperial rulers.
According to historical records, the worship of Heaven first took place in the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century-770BC) and became a routine during the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD). During the Tang Dynasty (608-907), the ceremony was held on an even larger scale. In 1911, the Heaven Worshipping convention was abolished. The last event of worshipping Heaven was held in 1915 by Yuan Shikai, the interim president of the Republic of China, as part of an effort to have himself declared Emperor of China. In 1918, the Temple of Heaven was turned into a park and opened to the public for the first time. Being a sacred place for whipping the God of Heaven, the Temple of Heaven had been seriously damaged by the Anglo-French Allied Forces in 1860, and again by the invading troops of the Eight Powers in 1900. At that time, the invaders occupied the Temple of Heaven and had their headquarters set up in the Palace of Abstinence. The invaders’ artillery was even placed on the Circular Mount Altar facing the Forbidden City.
As a site for worshipping Heaven, the Temple of Heaven is different from any other imperial structure. Architecturally speaking, the Temple of Heaven has two themes: heaven and earth. The surrounding walls of the Temple of Heaven are 6 meters high with a semicircular wall in the north and square shaped wall in the south. This layout represents an ancient belief that the Heaven is round while the Earth is square. The north wall is higher than the south which indicates that Heaven is high and Earth is low. The main buildings in the Temple of Heaven are circular shaped but each building has a round and a square wall around it.