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In December
1994, Potala Palace was listed by UNESCO in its world Heritage.
Located in Lhasa City of the Tibet Autonomous Region, and first
constructed in the 7th century, the Potala Palace is the most
comprehensive art treasure house of cultural relics in Tibetan
area of China.
Towering upon the Moburi Mountain in the Lhasa valley, the
Palace
is world renowned for its magnificence and exquisiteness. A serpentine
stairway up the mountainside leads to the palace buildings on
a height of 3,700 meters above sea level. Its stone-and-wood main
building has 13 stories, measuring 110 meters in elevation.
The construction of the Potala Palace was initiated
by Tibetan King Songtsan Gambo for his bride, the Tang Dynasty
Princess Wencheng. When the Tibetan Kingdom was in its prime period,
for the friendship between the Tibetan and the Han nationalities,
and to  welcome Princess Wencheng into Tibet, Songtsan Gambo ordered
the construction of the Palace. It had 999 rooms, plus the red
tower on the mountain top, one thousand rooms in all. Since then,
houses began to appear as living quarters in addition to tents.
The pious followers of Buddhism regarded the towering Palace on
top of the mountain as "The Polala Mountain," the sacred
place of Buddhism, hence the name of the Palace.
The mammoth and solemn Palace is composed of
the White Palace and Red Palace. The former is for politics and
daily life of Dalai Lama.
The latter comprises halls housing sturpa-tombs
of successive Dalai Lamas and various Buddhist halls. The Grand
Hall of the Red Palace, consists of dozens of Buddhist halls,
scripture halls and mourning halls, connecting with each other
by painted corridors and staircases. The Buddhist Halls enshrine
the statues painted in gold of Sakyamuni and deceased Dalai Lamas.
A great amount of ancient scriptures are stored in the Scripture
Halls. The mourning halls house the sturpa-tombs of 13 Dalai Lamas.
All the halls are full of streamers elaborately embroidered with
scriptures and incantations.
Above the statues of Buddha are hung colorful
ribbons. The air is thick with smoke of burning incenses offered
by Buddhist believers.
Hundreds of butter lamps burn day and night.
Most fascinating about the Potala Palace are
the Buddhist statues of various size made of copper, gold or silver,
which are unique and exquisite in shape, excellent in craftsmanship,
and lifelike. Some of them have a height of several meters, and
some, only a few inches. There are at least over 200 thousand
statures in all.
The Potala Palace is an enormous "Art
Museum" filled with dazzling array of paintings. The Art
Gallery on the second floor of Sixipingcuo Tower alone contains
698 mural paintings. According to the autobiography of Dalai Lama
of the fifth generation, the creation of Potala murals was started
in 1648 A. D. by 63 painters from various parts of Tibet and completed
10 years later. Over the past 300 years or more, the original
murals have undergone several renovations and a number of new
murals have been  added. Their contents cover a broad spectrum
of Buddhist life, and the unique land, custom, history and episodes
of Tibet. Tibetan painters are adept in applying colors of sharp
contrast to depict varied and colorful images, and have reached
extremely high artistic realm.
Some of the mural paintings measure 5-6 meters
high and a few score of meters long. Usually several hundred paintings
are grouped together in a magnificent and kaleidoscopic endless
array.
Mounting the top of the Potala Palace, one
has a bird's eye view of the various cupolas sparking under the
brilliant sunrays, the distant surrounding mountains with rivers
flowing through, and the ancient Lhasa City.
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