The Palace was once a prince's residence in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and later was transformed to a government office of the Jiangxi-Jiangsu (Liangjiang) governor in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). On March 19, 1853, Taiping army seized Nanjing as its capital. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom renamed Nanjing as Tianjing, began to build palaces on the basis of the office of the Jiangxi-Jiangsu governor and changed it into the palace of Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan. In 1951, a monument with words saying Monument For the Uprising of the Heavenly Kingdom was put up in front of the screen wall of the Heavenly King's Palace to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the uprising of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Guo Moruo wrote the epigraph, providing a chance for tourists to remember the peasants' kingdom in Chinese history.

The Heavenly King's Palace is a most magnificent and large-scaled architecture of the kingdom, covering an area of more than 10 Li. It has two walls around the city and each of them is about seven meters high. The city is divided into two parts: the inner city and the outer city, which are named Sun City and Golden Dragon City respectively. The front door of the Sun City is Tianchao Gate, in front of which is the imperial groove (Yu Gou). The imperial groove is 6.6 meters long and wide as well, with a bridge over it. A tablet engraved with Chinese characters Tianchao stands in front of the bridge. The front door of the Golden Dragon Gate is Shengtian Gate, and two three-storeyed buildings for royal court stand on either side of Shengtian Gate. Golden Dragon Palace is in the center of the Golden Dragon City, behind which are the Second Palace, the Third Palace and imperial gardens. The Golden Dragon Palace is very grand with double-eaves on the roof and colorful images of dragons, tigers and lions on the walls. On both sides of the Golden Dragon Palace are East and West Gardens. In July 1864, Zeng Guoquan and his army captured Tianjing, plundered heavily in the city and even burnt the Heavenly King's Palace. So only West Garden, Main Hall, Warm Pavilion and corridors remain extant today.

The West Garden within the Heavenly King's Palace underwent repair many times after the Qing Dynasty. Some of the views such as Hexagon Pavilion, Fangsheng Pavilion, Wangting Pavilion and the stone pai-lou in the pool, remain unchanged. Some of the Heavenly Kingdom's cultural relics such as the horizontal inscribed board and pedestal of Hong Xiuquan's Lunyin Tablet and stone drums were once discovered in the pool and on the rockeries of the West Garden. 

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