Earth Kingdom Royal Palace

The Earth King's Palace is the home of the Earth King and the seat of Earth Kingdom's government. It is located in the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se. After the fall of Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation, the palace was made home to Joo Dee, as the city's Supreme Bureaucratic Administrator.

History
Located within the Upper Ring, at the center of Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kings' palace and surrounding grounds are the spiritual and military center of the entire Earth Kingdom. It is here where the Earth King spends all his days, never leaving the safety of the walled compound. The palace is structured around a meridian line that cuts through the center of the city, from West to East, and leads directly to the Earth Kings throne. The Royal Palace itself is a tiered compound of towers, gardens, shrines, and courts that has been the home of the Earth Kings since the city was founded.

Only servants and the highest-ranking citizens of Ba Sing Se are allowed entry into the palace grounds, and even they are never permitted to enter the Royal Shrine located at the center of the palace grounds, which is reserved solely for the Earth King and his wives. Common citizens are forbidden from entering the Earth King's walled domain, unless they receive a personal invitation from the King himself. The Royal Palace and the Earth King are personally protected by the Kings Guards, an elite force of guards who act as sentries against intruders. Though not on par with the Dai Li, their Earthbending ability allows them to send impressive stone projectiles from the palace towers, enabling them to easily crush any would be invaders.

The Palace grounds are consisted primarily of numerous ceremonial temples, quarters to house the Kings servants, intricate gardens, and the King's menagerie of rare, exotic animals. Having a taste for tea, the grounds also hold the King's Tea Palace, an elegant tea room surrounded by lush gardens where tea is brewed and served to the Earth King and his honored guests. In addition, the palace grounds contain the Ba Sing Se prison, a maximum-security jail made entirely of solid metal in order to prevent Earthbenders from escaping. Long Feng makes the claim that he built the prison as a solution to the growing crime epidemic within Ba Sing Se and believes that the criminals it holds are a direct threat to the Earth King, but in actuality, he uses the jail to imprison those who oppose him and the Dai Li and the criminals themselves are actually political prisoners punished for speaking the truth.