rectangular courtyards defined by walls and with graduated privacy. The Palace City is enclosed twice by city walls, first by those of the Forbidden City, and second by those of the city proper.
The city of Peking stands on the site of an ancient settlement first known to history as Chi, and through most of the first millennium BC it was the seat of the dukes of Yen, the great feudatories of the Chou Dynasty. It has ever since been a place of some importance, but it became the capital of China only in the thirteenth century when the Mongol conqueror Khubilai Khan built his huge city Khanbaligh on the site of modern Peking. Marco Polo described the splendors of the city and the life of the Mongol court. Most of the Mongol city was destroyed by fire at the fall of the dynasty, and the plan of the present city was laid out by Yung Lo in the fifteenth century. The walls enclose an area of some 25 square miles. The plan is actually that of two cities, a square imposed on a rectangular parallelogram. The square portion is the Northern or Inner City, and the parallel
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