page_title: Nanjing
section_title: Southern capital of Ming dynasty
hierarchical_section_title: Nanjing / History / Southern capital of Ming dynasty
caption_attribution_description: 中文: 南京午朝门（明故宫） English: The Meridian Gate (front gate) of the Ming Palace, viewed from the northern (inner) side.
context_page_description: Nanjing, alternatively romanized as Nanking and Nankin, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China and the second largest city in the East China region, with 11 districts, an administrative area of 6,600 km² and a total population of 8,505,500 as of 2019.
  Situated in the Yangtze River Delta region, Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having served as the capital of various Chinese dynasties, kingdoms and republican governments dating from the 3rd century to 1949, and has thus long been a major center of culture, education, research, politics, economy, transport networks and tourism, being the home to one of the world's largest inland ports. The city is also one of the fifteen sub-provincial cities in the People's Republic of China's administrative structure, enjoying jurisdictional and economic autonomy only slightly less than that of a province. Nanjing has been ranked seventh in the evaluation of "Cities with Strongest Comprehensive Strength" issued by the National Statistics Bureau, and second in the evaluation of cities with most sustainable development potential in the Yangtze River Delta.
context_section_description: The first emperor of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang (the Hongwu Emperor), who overthrew the Yuan dynasty, renamed the city Yingtian (應天), rebuilt it, and made it the dynastic capital in 1368. He constructed a 48 km (30 mi) long city wall around Yingtian, as well as a new Ming Palace complex, and government halls. It took 200,000 laborers 21 years to finish the wall, which was intended to defend the city and its surrounding region from coastal pirates. The present-day City Wall of Nanjing was mainly built during that time and today it remains in good condition and has been well preserved. It is among the longest surviving city walls in China. The Jianwen Emperor ruled from 1398 to 1402.
  
  It is believed that Nanjing was the largest city in the world from 1358 to 1425 with a population of 487,000 in 1400. In 1421, the Yongle Emperor relocated the capital to Beijing. The city began to be called the 'southern capital' – Nanjing (南京), in comparison to the capital in the north. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor, wished to revert the relocation of the imperial capital from Nanjing to Beijing that had happened during the Yongle reign. On 24 February 1425, he appointed Admiral Zheng He as the defender of Nanjing and ordered him to continue his command over the Ming treasure fleet for the city's defense. 
   Zheng He governed the city with three eunuchs for internal matters and two military noblemen for external matters, awaiting the Hongxi Emperor's return along with the military establishment from the north. The emperor died on 29 May 1425 before this could have taken place, so Beijing remained the de facto capital and Nanjing remained the secondary capital. The succeeding Xuande Emperor remained in Beijing, so the aforementioned Nanjing government eventually became a permanent institution. In official Ming documents of 1425 to 1441, Nanjing was designated as the capital and Beijing was designated as the temporary capital. In 1441, Emperor Yingzong ordered to not to prefix the word "provisional" (行在) on the Beijing Government seals any longer, while Nanjing's need to prefix "Nanjing" for distinguishing purposes remained. Hence, Nanjing still had itself imperial government with extremely limited power before 1644.
  Besides the city wall, other Ming-era structures in the city included the famous Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum and Porcelain Tower, although the latter was destroyed by the Taipings in the 19th century either to prevent a hostile faction from using it to observe and shell the city or from superstitious fear of its geomantic properties.
  A monument to the huge human cost of some of the gigantic construction projects of the early Ming dynasty is the Yangshan Quarry (located some 15–20 km (9–12 mi) east of the walled city and Ming Xiaoling mausoleum), where a gigantic stele, cut on the orders of the Yongle Emperor, lies abandoned, just as it was left 600 years ago when it was understood it was impossible to move or complete it.
  As the center of the empire, early-Ming Nanjing had worldwide connections. It was home of the admiral Zheng He, who went to sail the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and it was visited by foreign dignitaries, such as a king from Borneo (渤泥; Bóní), who died during his visit to China in 1408. The Tomb of the King of Boni, with a spirit way and a tortoise stele, was discovered in Yuhuatai District (south of the walled city) in 1958, and has been restored.
  Over two centuries after the removal of the capital to Beijing, Nanjing was destined to become the capital of a Ming emperor one more time. After the fall of Beijing to Li Zicheng's rebel forces and then to the Manchu-led Qing dynasty in the spring of 1644, the Ming prince Zhu Yousong was enthroned in Nanjing in June 1644 as the Hongguang Emperor. His short reign was described by later historians as the first reign of the so-called Southern Ming dynasty.
  Zhu Yousong, however, fared a lot worse than his ancestor Zhu Yuanzhang three centuries earlier. Beset by factional conflicts, his regime could not offer effective resistance to Qing forces, when the Qing army, led 
caption: The Ming Palace, also known as the "Forbidden City of Nanjing", was the imperial palace of the early Ming dynasty, when Nanjing was the capital of China.
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