Yingxian Wooden Pagoda

The Oldest And Tallest Surviving All Wood Pagoda In The World, Built In 1056 · Shuozhou, Shanxi

The oldest and tallest wooden pagoda still standing anywhere, raised in 1056 in a small Shanxi county town and held together, like all great Chinese timber buildings, by bracket sets and joinery rather than nails. It climbs about sixty-seven metres in five visible storeys, with four hidden structural levels between them, and the fifty-four different types of bracket used in it are studied by architects worldwide. In nine and a half centuries it has ridden out dozens of earthquakes, including several that flattened the surrounding town, because the timber frame flexes and the whole structure settles back; it has also survived artillery fire, and shells were recovered from its beams. Inside, a Sakyamuni Buddha eleven metres tall sits on the ground floor beneath a painted coffered ceiling, with murals of guardians on the walls. Decades of leaning have made the upper floors unsafe, so access is restricted to the lowest level while engineers debate how to straighten a building nobody wants to take apart. The town around it is modest; the pagoda is the reason to come.

Fogong Temple, Yingxian County, Shuozhou, Shuozhou, Shanxi, China

Daily, roughly 8:00-18:00 in summer and 8:30-17:30 in winter (check); only the ground floor is open to visitors.

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