御道街位于南京市白下区，南起光华门，北抵午朝门，中有外五龙桥。因曾为其皇宫的南北中轴线，即明故宫御街和御道，故名。

　　明南京皇宫的内城叫宫城，外城称皇城。皇城是护卫宫城最近的一道城垣，环绕宫城等距而建。皇城呈凸字形，南北长五里，东西宽四里，周长九公里，开有六座城门。洪武门是明皇宫南面的正门，位于都城正阳门（即民国时期改称的光华门）内北面。从洪武门进入皇城后，是一条纵贯南北的宽阔御街，两边建有连续的廊屋，故又称为千步廊。

　　Situated in Baixia district, Nanjing, it starts from Guanghua City-Gate in the south and ends at Wuchao City-Gate in the north, with outer Wulong (Five-Dragon) Bridge in the middle. It is so named because it was the axis between the south and north of the imperial palace, i.e. the imperial street and the imperial road of the Ming palace.

　　In the Ming dynasty, the inner city of the imperial palace in Nanjing was called the palace city while its outer city was termed the imperial city, a protector closest to the palace city as it was built at a proportional dis－tance around the latter. In a convex shape, the imperial city with six gates stretches 2.5 kilometers long from south to north and 2 kilometers wide from east to west in a circumference of 9 kilometers. As the front gate in the south of the Ming palace, Hongwu City-Gate lies in the north inside Zhengyang City-Gate (it was renamed as Guanghua City-Gate under the reign of the Republic of China) of the capital-city. Hongwu City-Gate leads to a wide imperial street extending from south to north in the imperial city, a street flanked with continuous veranda-oriented houses, hence also resulting in the name: One-Thousand-Step Veranda.曹建新 译