Lhasa >> Potala Palace

Attraction Typ: Historic Site

Location: City Centre - Central

Recommend: 5 Star

Potala Palace

Potala Palace, the symbol of Lhasa, is the greatest monumental structure in Tibet and one of the most famous architectural works of the world. As the religious and political centre of old Tibet and the winter residence of Dalai Lamas, the palace witnessed the life of the Dalai Lamas and the important political and religious activities in the past centuries. The Potala Palace also houses great amounts of rare cultural relics including the gold hand-written Buddhist scriptures, valuable gifts from the Chinese emperors and a lot of priceless antiques. Thousands of pilgrims from Tibet, other parts of China, and abroad come every year to pay homage.

The Potala Palace(Chinese:布达拉宫；pinyin:bùdálāgōng) was the main residence of the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama. The Potala Palace, an administrative, religious and political complex, owns the beauty and originality of its architecture seen nowhere else in the world.

Potala Palace was first built in 7th century by King Songtsan Gampo to celebrate his marriage to Princess Wencheng of the Tang Dynasty, rebuilt by 5th Dalai Lama in the 17th century. Sitting on the top of Red Mountain in Lhasa, the palace consists of thirteen stories, has 1,000 rooms and is divided into two sections, the Red Palaces and the White Palaces. It contains a seminary, a printing workshop, living quarters, shrines, reliquary monuments, and an assembly hall for the monks. It is about 120 meters in height and 360 in width and takes up an area of 90,000 square meters. It is the quintessence of ancient Tibetan architecture and a treasury of Tibetan culture and arts.

Many precious cultural relics such as sutras, images of Buddha, Thangkas, are kept in the palace. In1994, UNESCO inscribed it on the list of World Heritage.