The Potala Palace in Tibet Autonomous Region

[yajuan]

The Potala Palace/Dazhao Temple was granted the name of "world cultural heritage" by UNESCO. The Potala Palace locates on the Maburishan Mountain (Red Mountain) in northwest corner of Tibet Autonomous Region. It is a complex building, which can include palaces, temples and towers. Potala Palace was first built during the middle period of Zhenguan of Tang dynasty for Songzanganbu, a Zanpu of Tufan, to marry Wencheng princess. When the 5th Dalai Lama was conferred a title, he built the current Potala Palace in 1645 and the State allocated lots of money to repair it in 1988 and it took 5 years to revive its former charm.

The Potala Palace including thousands of rooms was built depending mountains, length of which from east to west is 420 meters; width from south to north is 300 meters. Its main building is 119 meters high. In this building there are two palaces, white palace and red palace. The former locates in the middle and the latter traverses its two sides. The red palace includes coffin towers of different generations, various kinds of family halls for worshipping Buddha and halls containing the lections; and the white palace is a place for Dalai Lama to live and work.

From the east mountain foot going along the steps, you can get the Peng Cuoduo Door and goes on through the curving corridor, enters the broad east roof-Deyang Building. In the old times, there were performances when in some festivals. Going up the stairs, you can access various palaces.

The East Palace, the biggest one in the White Palace, is the place where the ministers accredited to Xizang hold the Zuochuang and the accession procedure and where is the place to carry out important religion and political activities.

In the Red Palace, there locates 8 sacrifice halls, each among which contains a coffin tower. Among these towers, the ones of the 5th and 13th Dalai Lamas are the most extravagant. The bodies of towers are covered with gold and on the surface there are various designs.

If you go through a little door from the coffin tower, you can access the West Palace, which is the biggest one in the Red Palace. On top of Red Palace is "Sasonglangjie" where there are Qianlong Emperor's portrait and memorial tablets of kings. In Qing dynasty, the Dalai Lama would come here to go worship at the emperor's birthday.

On top of White Palace are the two sets of sitting rooms for Dalai Lamas, which are called the East Riguang Palace and the West Riguang Palace where there are halls of lections, living rooms and sitting rooms.

Potala Palace is splendid in green and gold attracting the attention from the whole world.

[MadVlad]

I think I saw this palace in a movie, what was the name of the movie about the current Dalai Lama when he was a kid?

[davidals]

^

Kundun.

Kundun used (very well done, I believe) fascimilies constructed up in the Atlas Mountains in Morrocco; there was no way anyone from Hollywood would be getting into Tibet to film anything.