Located on Red Mountain in the center of Lhasa, Potala is not only the largest monumental structure in all of Tibet, but also the tallest ancient one.

Myths and facts

The palace is named after the legendary Potala Mountain in the South, where the bodhisattva Chenrezig (Avalokiteshvara) lives, who is represented on earth by the Dalai Lama. Legend has it that in the 7th century, to welcome his bride, Princess Wen Cheng, the Emperor of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo, built a 9-storey palace with 999 rooms. After the collapse of the Songtsen Gampo dynasty, the building was struck by lightning and the wooden structures burned down. Subsequent wars practically destroyed the ancient structure.

Construction of the current palace began in 1645 during the reign of the fifth Dalai Lama. By 1648 the White Palace was built. Red Palace, added in 1694. More than 7000 workers and 1500 artists and artisans worked on its construction. In 1922, the 13th Dalai Lama renovated many chapels and halls in the White Building and made changes to the Red Building.

Potala was the main residence of the Dalai Lama until the invasion of Tibet in 1959. Dalai Lama XIV was forced to leave and received political asylum in India. The rest of the monks were expelled, and the palace was plundered by Chinese soldiers. Unlike most Tibetan and Tibetan artifacts, the Potala was not destroyed by the Chinese army, and most of the artifacts are well preserved. Today, only a few monks are allowed to be there under strict supervision. The Chinese government uses the complex as a museum to attract foreign tourists.

In 1994, the Potala Palace was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and named one of the new seven wonders of the world. Today, the complex is visited daily by thousands of Tibetan pilgrims and travelers from all over the world.

What to see

The Potala Palace is located at an altitude of 3,700 m on Red Hill (Marpo Ri) in the middle of the Lhasa Valley. The total area of ​​the complex is 360 thousand square meters and consists of two parts: the Red Palace, as the center, and the White Palace, as two wings.

The heart of the complex is the Red Building (Potrang Marpo) - the highest part in the center. This part is completely devoted to religious education and Buddhist prayers. The building consists of many halls, chapels and libraries on several levels with galleries and winding corridors. Richly decorated with paintings, precious stones and carvings, it contains several temples and tombs of eight past Dalai Lamas, including a pagodas of 200,000 pearls.

The Great Western Hall located here with an area of ​​725 sq. is the largest hall in the Potala. The walls of the hall are decorated with beautiful frescoes and paintings. On three sides it is surrounded by three chapels: in the east, in the north and in the south. The Dharma Caves and the Holy Chapel are the only surviving 7th century buildings with statues of Songtsen Gampo, Princess Wen Cheng and Princess Bhrikuti inside.

The White Palace (Potrang Karpo) once served as the Tibetan local government office building and the Dalai Lama's living quarters. White walls symbolize peace and quiet. The Great East Hall on the fourth floor with an area of ​​717 sq. was the site of important religious and political ceremonies.

There are also schools of Buddhist logic, a seminary, a printing house, gardens, courtyards and even a prison in Potala. For over 300 years, the ancient palace has kept many cultural relics such as frescoes, stupas, statues, thangka and rare sutras. Of particular importance is the Fa-Wana cave, in which King Songtsen Gampo read sacred texts even before the construction of the building.

Lhasa is also open to the public.

The Potala palace is open from 7.30 am to 4 pm in the summer and from 9 am to 4 pm in the winter.
Cost: 100 RMB (about 11.7 €).
Excursions to the palace are limited, tickets are sold by prior arrangement (1 day in advance) after 17:00 the next day. In one hand they give 4 tickets. Only by registering, you can redeem an entrance ticket according to your documents, where time will be set to visit the palace.

The ancient kings of Tibet were mostly mystics, and many of them were tied by strong ties with the wonderful land of Ergor, or Shambhala.

I don't know exactly what influenced the decision of King Songtsen Gampo to choose the Red Mountain for his palace, but it is known that he built the Potala on the site of his meditation. This cave of his meditations is still safe and sound, despite the various periods of Tibetan history, which did not spare the Potala.

The name "Potala" is borrowed from Sanskrit, and in Tibetan it sounds like "Potola" or "Puto", which means "mystical mountain". It consists of 2 parts - the Red Palace and the White one.

The White Palace encircles the Red one, as it were, with a protective wall. It is very symbolic: after all, the white palace is the seat of the administrative, secular power of Tibet. The head of the Tibetan administration was the Dalai Lama. But few people mention that apart from the head of the Government, for some time in the Red Palace lived also Tashi Lama - the spiritual Head of Tibet, approved by the Masters of Shambhala.

The last Tashi Lama was forced to flee the Potala after the conspiracy of the penultimate Dalai Lama. Thus, the penultimate Dalai Lama rejected the great Patrons of Shambhala. And soon after this tragic event, Chinese troops entered Tibet. Karma. The young Dalai Lama, the heir to the traitor Lama, our contemporary had to move to India, where his residence is still located.

And Shambhala closed its gates for the Tibetan people. But not very dense, the invisible Hand is still there, and the Teaching of Kalachakra, which emanated from the Tower of Shambhala, finds ways for life in the world. And it is good that way.

Below is an excellent account of the modern Potala.

Original taken from anton_ermachkov to the Potala Palace

The Potala Palace, located on Red Mountain in the center of Lhasa, is not only the main attraction, shrine, the largest monumental structure in all of Tibet, but also the tallest palace in the world. This palace is a unique monument of culture and art and a truly architectural masterpiece.
I don't remember where and when I first saw a photograph of the Potala Palace, but since then I wanted to definitely come to Tibet and see this miracle live!

Photo 2. The palace is located at an altitude of 3,700 m on Red Hill (Marpo Ri) in the middle of the Lhasa valley. Numerous pilgrims walk around the hill with the palace, making a bark - a ritual tour of the holy place. Along the crust are numerous prayer drums and shopping arcades.

In 637, the king of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo, erected the first building here in the place where he used to meditate. When he decided to make Lhasa his capital, he built a palace. After his betrothal to the Chinese princess Wen Cheng, he expanded the palace to 999 rooms, erected walls and towers, and dug a bypass channel. In the second half of the 8th century, lightning hit the palace and the wooden buildings burned down, then due to internecine wars, the palace collapsed. Now only the Fa-Wana cave and the Pabalakan hall have survived.

The palace in its present form began to be built in 1645 at the initiative of the Dalai Lama V. In 1648 the White Palace was completed, and the Potala began to be used as the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas. The Red Palace was completed between 1690 and 1694.

Photo 3.

Photo 4. The heart of the complex is the Red Palace (Potrang Marpo) - the highest part in the center. This part is completely devoted to religious education and Buddhist prayers:

Photo 5. The building consists of many halls, chapels and libraries on several levels with galleries and winding corridors. Richly decorated with paintings, precious stones and carvings, it contains several temples and tombs of eight past Dalai Lamas:

Photo 6. The White Palace consists of a large eastern pavilion, a sun pavilion, living quarters of the regent and mentor of the Dalai Lama, as well as government offices:

Photo 7. The Great East Pavilion was used for official ceremonies; the Dalai Lama actually lived and worked in the Sun Pavilion:

Photo 8.

Photo 9. Going up:

Photo 10. Interesting material for the walls :)

Photo 11. The palace was the main residence of the Dalai Lama, until the forced departure of the XIV Dalai Lama in 1959 to India and receiving political asylum there. The Chinese government uses the complex as a museum. In 1994, the complex was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Photo 12. Since a tourist is given one hour to visit the palace, by the Chinese comrades, the inspection of the internal premises takes place practically on a run, but still I don't understand how it happened that this is the only photograph I took inside the palace:

Photo 13. On one of the tiers of the complex:

Photo 14. From the upper tiers of the Potala, a good view of Lhasa opens up:

Photo 15.

Photo 16. Potala at dusk:

Photo 17. And backlit:

Photo 18. A little closer:

Photo 19. On the square in front of the palace, the Chinese have built an excellent fountain, which attracts crowds of tourists and townspeople every evening. Tourists, spreading tripods, try to capture the beauty of the night Potala, children run under streams of water, parents run after children, couples retire on benches, and the Chinese military and firefighters are vigilantly watching everything that happens :))

Photo 20.

Photo 21.

Page 1 of 2

Potala Palace(named after the Potala, the so-called Pure Land of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara) is a world famous palace in the city of Lhasa, which was the official residence of the Dalai Lama during the era of the Central Tibetan government of Ganden Potrang (from 1642 to 1959). The huge palace is located on Mount Marpori (translated from Tibetan "Red Mountain") and rises 130 meters above the center of the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

The construction of the original palace building on Red Mountain was begun in 637 by King Songtsen Gampo, who ordered it to be erected in Lhasa for his wife Wen Cheng. The building was completed in 641. In the 8th century, it was almost completely destroyed by Chinese troops.

In the 17th century, the V Dalai Lama ordered a new palace to be built on the mountain. At the same time, the ruins left from the time of Songtsen Gampo were integrated into its structure. The construction of the first part (Potrang Karpo, ie "White Palace") of the current Potala Palace was completed in 1648 under the V Dalai Lama, and the second part (Potrang Marpo, ie "Red Palace") was completed only in 1694 after his death, under his 5th governor Desi Sangye Gyatso. A detailed account of the governor about this stage of construction has survived, with an extensive list of Newar artisans employed in it. The last major renovation was undertaken in 1922. Under the 13th Dalai Lama, several rooms were restored, and two more floors were added in the Red Palace.

After the construction of the Norbulingka Palace, which began to be used as a summer palace, Potala received the status of a winter residence.

During the years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Potala Palace complex was one of the few Tibetan cultural monuments that survived relatively well, since the Chinese occupation army was located here. Nowadays, it is used as a museum, but along with the Jokhang Temple, it is still one of the most important places of pilgrimage for Tibetan Buddhists.

The 13 floors of the palace are visible from the outside. The structure was built entirely of wood and stone. Its walls, up to 5 meters thick, are entirely built of granite. The foundation of the walls descends deep into the rock layer, and the outer walls are reinforced with reinforcement made by pouring molten iron into special channels. The reinforcement was supposed to strengthen the structure of the building and its resistance to earthquakes. The Potala Palace was decorated with rich gold decorations, which also served as lightning rods. Numerous lightning strikes that struck him over the past several centuries did not cause him any harm.

Tibet, Lhasa (which in translation from Sanskrit means "land of the gods"), the ledge of the rock Marproi ("Red Hill") - it is here, above the sacred city, that the palace called Potala rises. It was built specifically for the spiritual and political ruler of Tibet, the founder of Lamaism, Dalai Lama V (1617 - 1682).

The building of the palace looks like an impregnable rock. It is hard to imagine, but this structure, which has more than 30 floors, was built in 1694, when no high-rise buildings were being erected. At one time, he, perhaps, was perceived in the same way as skyscrapers today.

The Potala Palace, towering over the whole city, impresses with its appearance even a sophisticated person of the XXI century. The building on a rock ledge with countless windows carved into the snow-white wall creates the feeling of something majestic and almost fabulous.

Location:
Tibet is perhaps the most mysterious country on our planet. The policy of self-isolation used to be typical for many Asian countries, but only Tibet embodies it to this day. This, of course, is facilitated by the unique geographic location. Major Tibetan cities are located at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters above sea level, and some even more than 4,000 meters. Steep passes and thin air make travel to Tibet very difficult.

The city of Lhasa was erected in the rarefied airspace of the Himalayas, at an altitude of more than 3,650 meters. Until the Chinese occupation in 1951, monks made up the majority of the population here.

The main building of Tibet is the Potala Palace. This huge structure is clearly visible from afar from different points of the city and especially well - from the top of the Chagpo Ri hill. Being in Lhasa, you catch yourself thinking that it is impossible to take your eyes off this building. Potala is located at 3,700 meters above sea level, its height is 115 meters, with a total area of ​​over 130,000 square meters. There is no exact data on how many rooms and halls there are in the Potala. Their number is "somewhere over a thousand," as the guides say. Until now, not a single person has ever visited all the premises in this palace.

Story:
The name "Potala" comes from the word which in Sanskrit means "mountain of Buddha". At this place in the 7th century AD, there was the Song-wall Gampu palace, dedicated to the Buddhist ruler of Tibet.

Centuries later, in 1645, the V Dalai Lama, who is also the ruler of Tibet, ordered to build a palace on the site of the destroyed residence. Construction began on the first, lower part of the Potala - the White Palace (Potrang Karpo). The nine-storey structure of the upper part was completed 3 years later. In 1649, the Fifth Dalai Lama moves from Drepung to his new residence.

The circumstances surrounding the construction of the Upper Red Palace (Potrang Marpi), the second largest building, remain the subject of much controversy to this day. When the Dalai Lama died in 1682, construction was still pending. The death of the Dalai Lama was kept silent until 1694, when, finally, the palace was not built. According to some reports, the Red Palace was conceived as a mausoleum.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama undertook some work to renovate the building, removing some sections of the White Palace, in order to expand part of the chapels. Until the 1950s, the palace remained the seat of the Tibetan government.

Potala came under fire during the popular uprising against the Chinese in 1959. As luck would have it, the damage was minor, both during the uprising and in the subsequent years of the Cultural Revolution.

The palace remained the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas until 1959, when the current 14th Dalai Lama emigrated to India. For many years after the Chinese occupation, the palace was closed to the public, and only in 1980 it was reopened. In 1985, the last restoration work was completed, for which about $ 4 million was spent.

Peculiarities:
The palace was built from earth, stone and wood using the most basic means. All building materials were delivered by people on themselves or on donkeys. It’s not hard to guess that the work was extremely hard.

To get inside the palace, which is shaped like a truncated pyramid or trapezoid, you need to walk along a wide square located on all sides of the building. Only after passing through them you can come to the slope, over the entire surface of which are scattered many zigzag staircases connecting all parts of the palace.

The Potala Palace is divided into two parts - Pochjangabo and Pojangmabo (Red and White Palace). Pochjangabo is the place where the personal chambers of the Dalai Lama are located and solemn ritual ceremonies are held. Pochjangmabo is the abode of monks and servants. Buddhist halls and burial pagodas-stupas are located here.

In the main part of the building were built government premises, rooms for the attendants, which consisted exclusively of monks, and a monastic school. Previously, there were also meditation rooms, libraries, armories, granaries, storerooms, torture chambers and a punishment cell.

Inside the building there are more than 1,000 different rooms, where 10,000 shrines and no less than 20,000 statues are hidden. Numerous chapels and sanctuaries are filled with statues, paintings embroidered on silk, vessels for incense and other ritual objects. The roofs of the palace covered with gold, granite walls, graceful cornices with gilded decorations give the architectural ensemble splendor and grandeur.

One of the main attractions of the palace is the many frescoes depicting various everyday and ritual scenes. Some of the frescoes were not available for wide viewing for a long time. Only in the late 90s were they hung in the halls, and now they can be seen by all pilgrims and tourists who came to the Potala.

Many of the frescoes depict the twelve-armed god Avalokitershvara and his wife, the goddess Tara. The fact is that it is these deities that are considered the main patrons of Tibet. To make these frescoes, Tibetan craftsmen used agate, amber, gold and silver powder.

In the city of Lhasa in Tibet - the royal palace and Buddhist temple complex, was the main residence of the Dalai Lama.
Until the flight of the 14th Dalai Lama to Darmasalu (India) after the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959.
It is located on a high hill overlooking the city. The total area of ​​the palace complex is 360 thousand square meters. m.

Now the Potala Palace is a museum actively visited by tourists, remaining a place of pilgrimage for Buddhists and continuing to be used in Buddhist rituals.
Due to its enormous cultural, religious, artistic and historical significance, it was included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1994.

Name "Potala" comes from the word which in Sanskrit means "Buddha mountain". At this place in the 7th century AD, there was the Song-wall Gampu palace, dedicated to the Buddhist ruler of Tibet.

Potala is located 3700 meters above sea level, its height is 115 meters, divided into 13 floors, the total area of ​​which is more than 130,000 square meters. There is no exact data on how many rooms and halls there are in the Potala. Their number is "somewhere over a thousand", and there are very few people who could bypass them all.

The palace in its present form began to be built in 1645 at the initiative of the Dalai Lama V. In 1648 the White Palace (Potrang Karpo) was completed, and the Potala began to be used as the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas. The Red Palace (Potrang Marpo) was completed between 1690 and 1694.

The palace is located at an altitude of 3,700 m on Red Hill (Marpo Ri) in the middle of the Lhasa Valley. Because of the terraces, roof decks and temples, it does not give the impression of a fortress (dzonga). The general view of the palace, stretching out on a mountain ridge, with towers, walls, stairs, temples and annexes, is a unique artistic solution, its majesty and beauty are appreciated by Buddhists, architects and artists, amaze travelers.
Numerous pilgrims walk around the hill with the palace, making a bark - a ritual tour of the holy place. Along the crust are numerous prayer drums and shopping arcades.

To get inside the palace, which is shaped like a truncated pyramid or trapezoid, you need to walk along a wide square located on all sides of the building. Only after passing through them you can come to the slope, over the entire surface of which are scattered many zigzag staircases connecting all parts of the palace.

The White Palace consists of a large east pavilion, a sun pavilion, the quarters of the regent and mentor of the Dalai Lama, and government offices. The large eastern pavilion was used for official ceremonies; the Dalai Lama actually lived and worked in the Sun Pavilion, read sacred texts, and was engaged in management.

The Red Palace served to a greater extent as a place of prayers and religious rituals, and there are pavilions in it. Eight memorial stupas, including the Fifth and Thirteenth Dalai Lamas, are of great importance.

In addition to stupas, the palace consists of a string of large and small halls (temples) dedicated to Buddhas, bodhisattvas, Dalai Lamas, as well as for audiences and ceremonies. The halls display jewels and relics - spatial mandalas for contemplation, memorial stupas, statues of the Dalai Lamas and teachers, statues of deities and yidams, books, ritual objects, and a complex system of painting on the walls.

Excerpt from the book of His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV "My country and my people"

“They say this is one of the largest buildings in the world. Even if you have lived there for many years, all the secrets of this building are impossible to know. It completely covers the top of the hill. It is a whole city.

However, in addition to the fact that this building was used as an office, temple, school and dwelling, the Potala was also a huge warehouse. There were rooms filled with thousands of priceless icon scrolls, thangkas. Some of them were written a thousand years ago. There were rooms filled with the golden regalia of the ancient kings of Tibet, also over 1000 years old, and various gifts received from the Chinese and Mongol emperors, as well as the treasures of the Dalai Lamas who ruled the country after the kings. Armor and weapons from the period of all Tibetan history were also kept here.

The libraries contained the annals of Tibetan culture and religion, about seven thousand huge volumes. Some are said to have weighed about 80 pounds, while others were written on palm leaves brought from India 1,000 years ago. Two thousand enlightening volumes of scriptures were written in ink composed of powders of gold, silver, iron, copper, mother-of-pearl, lapis lazuli and coral. Each line was written in a different color ink. "

One of the main attractions of the palace is the many frescoes depicting various everyday and ritual scenes. Some of the frescoes were not available for wide viewing for a long time. Only in the late 90s were they hung in the halls, and now they can be seen by all pilgrims and tourists who came to the Potala.
Many of the frescoes depict the twelve-armed god Avalokitershvara and his wife, the goddess Tara. The fact is that it is these deities that are considered the main patrons of Tibet. To make these frescoes, Tibetan craftsmen used agate, amber, gold and silver powder.