Gallery of the Pagodas in Beijing -- china.org.cn

Chinese Pagodas are a traditional part of Chinese architecture, and is evolved from the stupa which is from India. In addition to religious use, since ancient times Chinese pagodas have been praised for the spectacular views which they offer, and many famous poems in Chinese history attest to the joy of scaling pagodas.

Click the picture to see more pagoda photos

From the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties (~25-589) pagodas were mostly built of wood, as were other ancient Chinese structures. Wooden pagodas are highly resistant to earthquakes, however many have burnt down, and wood is also prone to both natural rot and insect infestation.

During the Northern Wei and Sui dynasties (386-618) experiments began with the construction of brick and stone pagodas. Even at the end of the Sui, however, wood was still the most common material.

The earliest extant brick pagoda is the 40 m tall Songyue Pagoda in Dengfeng Country, Henan. This curved, circle-based pagoda was built in 523 and has survived for 15 centuries.

The earliest large-scale stone pagoda is a Four Gates Pagoda at Licheng, Shandong, built in 611.

One of the earliest brick and stone pagodas was a three-storey construction built in the Jin Dynasty (265-420), by Wang Jun of Xiangyang. However, it is now destroyed.

Brick and stone went on to dominate Tang, Song, Liao and Jin Dynasty pagoda construction. An example of such would be the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda (652 AD), built during the early Tang Dynasty.

Know more about pagodas at Ancient Pagodas in China

(China.org.cn March 4, 2009)

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