Zhongyue Temple and Songyue Pagoda (Dengfeng)

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Historic Monuments Of Dengfeng In The Centre Of Heaven And Earth, 2010) · Dengfeng, Henan

The quieter half of the Historic Monuments of Dengfeng, a World Heritage group of eight sites scattered around Mount Song in Henan that together trace two thousand years of Chinese ritual, learning and astronomy at what was long considered the centre of heaven and earth. Zhongyue Temple is the great Taoist complex at the mountain's foot, dedicated to the god of the Central Peak, with origins in the Qin dynasty and a Qing-era layout of eleven courtyards climbing a kilometre-long axis beneath ancient cypresses; four fierce iron guardians cast in 1064 still stand in one of its yards. A few kilometres away, hidden in a wooded valley, rises the Songyue Pagoda, built in 523 and the oldest surviving brick pagoda in China - a graceful twelve-sided tower of fifteen tapering tiers whose curved profile influenced pagoda design for centuries. The same World Heritage listing covers the Songyang Academy, one of the four great academies of imperial China, shaded by cypresses said to be thousands of years old; the Observatory at Gaocheng, where the astronomer Guo Shoujing measured the year in 1276; and the Han-dynasty stone gate-towers of Taishi. Together they make a rewarding day of relics away from the crowds at nearby Shaolin.

Zhongyue Temple, Dengfeng, Zhengzhou, Dengfeng, Henan, China

Zhongyue Temple daily about 7:30-17:00, with last tickets at 16:30; the other Dengfeng monuments keep similar daytime hours and are ticketed separately (check).

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