Temple of Heaven

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is a wooden calendar: four inner “dragon well” pillars for the seasons, twelve for the months, twelve for the two-hour watches of the day — twenty-eight columns for the twenty-eight lunar mansions, and not a nail in the frame. The park itself is a diagram of the cosmos, round to the north for heaven and square to the south for earth; the emperor walked it alone.

#architecture