Abstract:

During the early Eastern Jin Dynasty, Jiankang took on the characteristics of a capital city with the imperial society established and the Sun Wu Taichu Palace designated as the palace city. After the Su Jun Rebellion, Wang Dao resisted the proposal to relocate the capital, and Wang Bin built Yuancheng as the imperial palace. Later, Xie An presided over the reconstruction of Yuancheng, building the palace by imitating heaven and earth. The capital city of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was bordered by fifty-six gates, and the palaces were concentrated in the imperial palace. Outside the palace, there was no planning according to the imperial ritual system, which reflected the spatial constraints of imperial power on clan politics. In the Liu Song Dynasty, the spatial reach of imperial power gradually expanded, and the Hualin Garden in the north of the palace was designated as a place to welcome good fortune and courtroom. Emperor Xiaowu designated the royal domain by reconstructing the ceremonial space of the capital city, using Niutou Mountain as the new southern suburban worship site, building Emperor’s exclusive passage and Mingtang (the mail hall of the palace), displaying space of imperial power expanded from the imperial palace to the royal domain From the Eastern Jin to the Liu Song, the spatial extension of imperial power directly reflected the political transformation of the Jiangzuo regimes from clan politics to the rising of royal power, and established the foundational model of Southern Dynasty imperial spatial politics.

Key words: Eastern Jin, Liu Song, space, imperial palace, capital city, the royal domain