(NOTE: If the Google map above is not appearing, you can see the Forbidden City map here.)

There is one nice surprise by using Google’s aerial map to view the Forbidden City. You can see how thinking that dates back centuries affected a world-famous structure for China’s emperors and their dynasties.

Literally. Just zoom up close.

Look for the middle or “meridian” line that runs south to north in the historic seat of dynastic power in Beijing.

The Forbidden City was home to two dozen emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It has nearly 10,000 rooms. It was so important in China that it was named after the “center of the heavens.”

With astrology playing a strong role in parts of Chinese history, many perceived it to reflect the “heavenly earth,” as Xuefeng Liao writes in a paper posted on Middlebury College’s Web site.

And this middle or “meridian” line was so crucial for Chinese astrology and thinking that it “served as the benchmark, indicating power and royalty,” Liao says.

The City is strictly planned according to this meridian line….The most important buildings, the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Central Harmony, the Hall of Preserving Harmony, the Palace of Earthly Tranquility, the Hall of Union and the Palace of Heavenly Purity, are situated exactly on the meridian line. Other buildings, though not on the meridian line, are symmetric about the meridian line.

I certainly missed this line when I first saw Google maps a while back.

My wife, Dan, and I were playing with the popular mapping system. At the time, I was looking to see which of my former neighbors in California owned swimming pools.

Then, I decided to see if there were satellite images of China. The first place I checked was Beijing.

Later, my wife talked about an article describing how an architect had measured the distance from that middle line to the eastern and western walls.

The architect quoted in the article, as she remembers, said the measurements were nearly equal, just a tad shy of perfect.

My wife had heard about this line from her family and reading when she was a child in China.

Visually, this line reminded me of how the Chinese write the character for middle or “zhong.” The character is often seen in the Chinese representation for the Middle Kingdom, or China.

But my wife told me that the word China rose to popularity largely because of Sun Yat-sen, who supported a republic. When emperors had power, she said, people referred to the name of an individual dynasty.

To see another aerial map of the Forbidden City and its middle line, click here.

The Forbidden City also is on the United Nations’ World Heritage list. The Forbidden City lists information here.

And yes, I recognize that not everyone is happy with the Google mapping service, particularly its Street View. Criticism is here, here and here.

But at least in this case, it lets people who live outside of China see an important part of history that dates back hundreds of years.