I found a great website called The Palace Museum. It has information on actually visiting the forbidden city such as maps, exhibitions, hours etc. What I found most intriguing is the virtual palace tour. You can choose from three topics; architecture, art and history. Under those topics are subtopics mostly covering the Song to Qing dynasties. Each topic has a picture or visual and then a thorough explanation. There are wonderful pictures of intracate jade carvings, calligraphy, painting, architecture and others. There is also a section with downloads. You can print or save to your computer hundreds of artworks and pictures of architecture. The site is very easy to use. It is available in three languages, one of them being English.
The only problem with the website is the pictures cannot be enlarged so I do not think they are large enough to view as a class. They can be printed out along with the explanation though, or if your students have access to their own computers they could view it that way. The downloads are large beautiful pictures, but they are not labeled so I do not have any information on them.
This website could easily be used with students in a number of ways. Given the website, they could be asked to research styles, individual artists or mediums and report back to the class. Class sets of printouts could also be made and used in class discussion.
http://www.dpm.org.cn/index1024768.html
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