Visitor Guide
◽Opening hours: 8 am-6 pm (all year round)
◽Address: Inside Fogong Temple, northwest of Yingxian county, Shuozhou, Shanxi province
Overview
The Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is the world’s oldest and tallest surviving wooden pagoda, standing 65.84 meters high. Built during the Liao Dynasty and repaired and renovated repeatedly in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (1271-1911), the pagoda stands at the front section of the temple’s central axis. This layout, centering the complex around a pagoda, continues the Buddhist temple design tradition of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589).
Facing south, the octagonal pagoda has nine stories, with five visible stories and four hidden mezzanine stories. Each visible story houses Liao Dynasty (916-1125) sculptures. More than 50 types of bracket sets are preserved here, representing a grand synthesis of bracket sets in ancient Chinese architecture, unparalleled among large-scale surviving structures. For over nine centuries, the wooden pagoda has withstood powerful earthquakes and the ravages of war, yet it still stands majestically, a true exemplar of wooden architecture.