A new ticketing system is to be introduced at Beijing's Forbidden City in a move designed to protect the iconic site by limiting visitor numbers.

Chinese media has reported that what is one of the country's biggest tourist attractions - also known as the Palace Museum - frequently receives far more visitors than its daily capacity of 60,000. It cites just one day during the recent seven-day Golden Week holiday when around 122,000 people passed through the museum's gates. Currently, all tickets to the site are sold manually, which fails to accurately monitor the flow of visitors. This will change with the introduction next year of a new e-ticketing system, of which museum assistant director Feng Nai'en is quoted as saying: "Once the system is operational, the computer will stop selling tickets if the number of visitors has reached the museum's maximum capacity."

He added that the move would not only benefit the structure of the museum - suffering from worn flooring and a fading of its characteristic vermeil-coloured walls - but also improve the overall visitor experience. The introduction of a reservation system has also been mooted, which would both control the number of visitors and help the authorities plan ahead for busy days.

Such a regulation was passed in Tibet in 2009 to protect the Potala Palace - the country's former imperial palace in Lhasa - limiting the number of daily visitors to 2,300.