Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square
Groups of people wander around Tiananmen Square in the late afternoon.
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	天安門廣場
Simplified Chinese	天安门广场
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng Wade–Giles T'ien-anmen Kwangch'ang IPA [tʰjɛ́n.ánmə̌n kwɑ̌ŋtʂʰɑ̀ŋ] Wu Romanization Thie-oe-men Kuaon-zaon Yue: Cantonese IPA [tʰíːnʔɔ́ːnmȕːn kʷɔ̌ːŋtsʰœ̏ːŋ] Jyutping Tin1on1mun4 Gwong2 coeng4 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Thian-an-mn̂g Kóng-tiûⁿ
Manchu name
Manchu script	ᡝᠯᡥᡝ ᠣᠪᡠᡵᡝ ᡩᡠᡴᠠ
Romanization	elhe obure duka

Tiananmen Square is a city square in the centre of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen ("Gate of Heavenly Peace") located to its north, separating it from the Forbidden City. The square contains the Monument to the People's Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China in the square on October 1, 1949; the anniversary of this event is still observed there. Tiananmen Square is within the top ten largest city squares in the world (440,500 m² – 880×500 m or 109 acres – 960×550 yd). It has great cultural significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history.

Outside China, the square is best known for the Tiananmen Square Massacre, an armed suppression of a pro-democracy movement in June 1989.

The Tiananmen ("Gate of Heavenly Peace"), a gate in the wall of the Imperial City, was built in 1415 during the Ming dynasty. In the 17th century, fighting between Li Zicheng's rebel forces and the forces of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty caused heavy damage to, or even destroyed, the gate. Tiananmen Square was designed and built in 1651, and has since been enlarged by four times its original size in the 1950s.

Near the centre of the square stood the "Great Ming Gate", the southern gate to the Imperial City, renamed "Great Qing Gate" during the Qing dynasty, and "Gate of China" during the Republican era. Unlike the other gates in Beijing, such as the Tiananmen and the Zhengyangmen, this was a purely ceremonial gateway, with three arches but no ramparts, similar in style to the ceremonial gateways found in the Ming tombs. This gate had a special status as the "Gate of the Nation", as can be seen from its successive names. It normally remained closed, except when the Emperor passed through. Commoner traffic was diverted to side gates at the western and eastern ends of the square, respectively. Because of this diversion in traffic, a busy marketplace, called "Chess Grid Streets", was developed in the big, fenced square to the south of this gate.