View of the Zhengyang Gate 正阳门
The next tower was a little trickier to get to, you would have to go through the underpass to get to it. There was a major road between the archery tower and the Zhengyang Gate and it would not be good to have a pedestrian crossing in this busy part of town. This is the problem with development, it permeates into parts of heritage areas which forces authorities to make decisions about how to go about the development. In the end cutting a road in between the two structures would be the best solution, and an underpass was constructed for the pedestrians. It would be noted that there used to be walls around the archery tower and the Zhengyang gate itself.
Closer Look at the Zhengyang Gate 正阳门
The Zhengyang Gate is a beautiful 15th century Ming style building that serves as one of the introductions to Ming style architecture to be found inside the Forbidden City. The Zhengyang Gate is one of the gate which I have visited. The Deshengmen which I accidentally visited was one of the Zhengyan Gate’s siblings and they were connected by city walls which are now long gone. I would have been interesting to see century old city walls still standing in this fast developing city. Oh well, they do still have a lot of centuries old structures.
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