Kaifeng Old City (Iron Pagoda and Daxiangguo Temple)

Former Northern Song Capital, With The 1049 Glazed Brick Iron Pagoda · Kaifeng, Henan

The old capital of the Northern Song dynasty, where for a century and a half Kaifeng was probably the largest and richest city on Earth - the city painted in the famous scroll Along the River During the Qingming Festival, crowded with shops, bridges and boats. Repeated flooding by the Yellow River buried that city under metres of silt, so the Song town survives mostly underground, but a few great buildings stand above it. The Iron Pagoda, finished in 1049, rises 55 metres in thirteen storeys clad in glazed bricks whose brown-purple sheen gives it its name, and has survived floods, earthquakes and war almost unchanged. The Daxiangguo Temple, founded in the sixth century and rebuilt after a flood in the 1760s, keeps an octagonal hall with a thousand-armed, thousand-eyed Guanyin carved from a single gingko trunk. Around them are the Dragon Pavilion on its terrace, the leaning Po Pagoda, the Shanshaangan Guild Hall and, on the lake, the Millennium City Park, a full-scale re-creation of the Song city from the scroll. Kaifeng is also known for its night market food.

Iron Pagoda Park, Longting District, Kaifeng, Henan, China

Sites open daily, roughly 8:00-18:00 with shorter winter hours (check); the night market runs from early evening until late.

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