Tian'anmen Square - the world largest

Tiananmen Square Just south of the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square (The Gate of Heavenly Peace Square), the largest inner-city square in the world that can hold up to a million people. It was cleared in 1958 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, replacing an older open space in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the main entrance to the imperial city, that had a longer history of political importance. On May 4, 1919, students demonstrated here against provisions of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I that were considered unfair to China. The May Fourth Movement spawned here was a widespread movement for political and literary modernization that impacted the rest of the century.
After the founding of the People’s Republic, Tiananmen Square became symbolic of the socialist state through the construction in 1959 of the Great Hall of the People on its western side, and the Museums of Chinese History and the Chinese Revolution on its eastern edge. In the same period, a Monument to the People’s Heroes was erected in the center of the square. In addition, following Chairman Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, a Chairman Mao Mausoleum building was erected directly on the main north-south axis of the square. It contains the preserved body of Mao in a crystal sarcophagus, along with a standing marble statue of the Chairman. China’s imperial past, revolutionary history, and political present are all represented vividly in Tiananmen Square.