I have forgotten the significance of this beautiful arch. G and I are standing to the left of centre.

This is the famous 'marble boat'. The Empress Dowager Cixi re-built the whole Palace in 1888 after it had been demolished by invading nasty Anglo-French foreigners in the second Opium War. It was demolished again in 1900 and again she re-built it. Each time she spent a fortune which should have been spent on the navy. Instead she built this marble boat at the edge of the lake at the end of the long corridor