The Potala Palace, which is now on the list of Chinese national key protected cultural relics, is the most valuable storehouse in Tibet. It is a huge treasure house for materials and articles of Tibetan history, religion, culture and arts. The Palace is widely known for the precious sculptures, murals, scripture, Buddha figures, murals, antiques, and religious jewelry treasured up, they are of great cultural and artistic value. In 1994, the Potala Palace was declared the United Nations World Cultural Heritage site.
Structure of Potala Palace
The Potala Palace is 3,756.5 meters above sea level, covering an area of over 360,000 square meters (about 32 acres), measuring 360 meters from east to west and 270 meters from south to north. It has 13 stories, and is 117 meters high. The walls of the Palace are over one meter in thickness, the thickest sections being five meters. They are painted with huge colorful murals, which make it beautiful and lively.
The magnificent Potala Palace is made of wood and stone. All the walls are of granite, and all the roofs and windows are of wood. The overhanging eaves, the upturned roof corners, and the gilded brass tiles and gilded pillars inscribed with Buddhist scriptures, bottles, and makara fish as well as the gold-winged birds decorating the roof ridges contribute much to the beauty of the hip-and-gable roofs.
The stone-and-wood-structured Potala Palace consists of over 1000 rooms, seminary, chanting hal1, temples, various chambers for worshipping Buddha and chambers housing the stupas of several Dalai Lamas, which are covered with gold 1eaf and studded with jewels. In the rooms, there are tens of thousands of Buddha figures. Different in sizes and complex in designs, the figures look vivid and lovely.
History of Potala Palace
The Potala Palace was built in the seventh century and it has already had a long history of over 1300 years. In 641, Songtsan Gambo, ruler of the Tubo Kingdom, had the Potala Palace built for Wen Chen Konjo (Princess Wencheng) of the Tang Dynasty, whom he was soon to marry. This structure was later burned to the ground during a war (The hall for worshiping bodhisattva Avalokitesvara and the statues of Songtsan Gambo and Wencheng Konjo now displaying are said being the survivors of the war) and was rebuilt in the 17th century by the Fifth Dalai Lama. Repeated repairs and expansions until 1645 finally brought the palace to its present scale. Over the past three centuries, the palace gradually became a place where the Dalai Lamas live and work and a place for keeping the remains of successive Dalai Lama.
The Potala Palace has always been the political center of Tibet since the fifth Dalai Lama (1645-1693). In 1645, the Fifth Dalai Lama, feeling confined at Drepung Monastery, ordered the construction of a new structure that would accommodate his new role as both a religious and political leader. The Potala Palace was then built as the imposing and self-confident expression of the new theocracy. After the ascension of the Seventh Dalai Lama (1728-1757), who established a summer palace at the Norbulingka, the Potala Palace was used predominantly during winter, then it comes its other name “Winter Palace.”
Structure of Potala Palace
The Potala Palace is 3,756.5 meters above sea level, covering an area of over 360,000 square meters (about 32 acres), measuring 360 meters from east to west and 270 meters from south to north. It has 13 stories, and is 117 meters high. The walls of the Palace are over one meter in thickness, the thickest sections being five meters. They are painted with huge colorful murals, which make it beautiful and lively.
The magnificent Potala Palace is made of wood and stone. All the walls are of granite, and all the roofs and windows are of wood. The overhanging eaves, the upturned roof corners, and the gilded brass tiles and gilded pillars inscribed with Buddhist scriptures, bottles, and makara fish as well as the gold-winged birds decorating the roof ridges contribute much to the beauty of the hip-and-gable roofs.
The stone-and-wood-structured Potala Palace consists of over 1000 rooms, seminary, chanting hal1, temples, various chambers for worshipping Buddha and chambers housing the stupas of several Dalai Lamas, which are covered with gold 1eaf and studded with jewels. In the rooms, there are tens of thousands of Buddha figures. Different in sizes and complex in designs, the figures look vivid and lovely.
History of Potala Palace
The Potala Palace was built in the seventh century and it has already had a long history of over 1300 years. In 641, Songtsan Gambo, ruler of the Tubo Kingdom, had the Potala Palace built for Wen Chen Konjo (Princess Wencheng) of the Tang Dynasty, whom he was soon to marry. This structure was later burned to the ground during a war (The hall for worshiping bodhisattva Avalokitesvara and the statues of Songtsan Gambo and Wencheng Konjo now displaying are said being the survivors of the war) and was rebuilt in the 17th century by the Fifth Dalai Lama. Repeated repairs and expansions until 1645 finally brought the palace to its present scale. Over the past three centuries, the palace gradually became a place where the Dalai Lamas live and work and a place for keeping the remains of successive Dalai Lama.
The Potala Palace has always been the political center of Tibet since the fifth Dalai Lama (1645-1693). In 1645, the Fifth Dalai Lama, feeling confined at Drepung Monastery, ordered the construction of a new structure that would accommodate his new role as both a religious and political leader. The Potala Palace was then built as the imposing and self-confident expression of the new theocracy. After the ascension of the Seventh Dalai Lama (1728-1757), who established a summer palace at the Norbulingka, the Potala Palace was used predominantly during winter, then it comes its other name “Winter Palace.”
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