In addition to being impossibly grand, it's also remarkably sterile. The basic idea is that you walk in the main gate, with the famous portrait of Mao Tse Tung (added since the time of the emperors). Then there's a massive, stone plaza, and a huge staircase leading up to another ceremonial building/gate. This in turn leads to another huge plaza, and another building, and it goes on pretty much forever. As you'd expect from the name, nobody was allowed in the complex without the emperor's permission, but that permission would also dictate how many of these gates and plazas you could cross, with nobody ever allowed to enter the back half of the complex, the Inner Court, where only the emperor and his immediate family lived. Throughout this whole arrangement, there are barely any trees, with almost all the plazas paved in stone.