Skip to content

About
- - At Smarthistory, the Center for Public Art History, we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background.
    
    With 503 contributors from 201 colleges, universities, museums, and research centers, Smarthistory is the most-visited art history resource in the world.
For Learning
Books
- - NEW TITLES
  - - Reframing Art History
      a new kind of textbook
  - - Guide to Byzantine art
For Teaching
- - TOOLS FOR TEACHING
  - All content for teaching
  - Webinars past & present
  - Teaching with images: K-12
  - Syllabi
  - Do-it-yourself tools
- - - UPCOMING EVENT
    - - Dr. Elena FitzPatrick Sifford on casta paintings
        Check back for upcoming events
  - - PAST EVENT
    - - Dr. Elena FitzPatrick Sifford on casta paintings
        Apr.06.2022
        The Kaaba with Dr. Nancy Demerdash
Support
- - SUPPORT SMARTHISTORY
  - Donate
  - Contribute an essay
- - We created Smarthistory to provide students around the world with the highest-quality educational resources for art and cultural heritage—for free.
Search

Search

All Results

Generic filters

Hidden label

Search in excerpt

Search

over here

Dr. Ying-chen Peng

Forbidden City, Looking to the Meridian Gate from the north (Imperial Palace Museum) (photo: inkelv112, CC BY-NC 2.0) — Covering 178 acres, this gated complex was a “golden cage” for China’s emperors and courtiers. It is now a museum.

The Forbidden City

by Dr. Ying-chen Peng

Browse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning!

Sign up for our newsletter!

Receive occasional emails about new Smarthistory content.

Have you seen our new "textbook"?

Reframing Art History—it's free!

more than 50 chapters

developed by more than 50 experts

Check it out!

See what is soon to be published Close

Smarthistory is a nonprofit organization

At Smarthistory we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Smarthistory’s free, award-winning digital content unlocks the expertise of hundreds of leading scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other publisher.

Donate
Contact Us

About Smarthistory
Smarthistory’s blog
Contribute an essay
Content editors and contributors

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License