The Potala Palace is situated on Marpo Ri (Red Mountain) in Lhasa, a city in the Tibet Autonomous Region of southwest China. Development for the palace started in 1645 under the rule of the fifth Dalai Lama – the otherworldly head of Tibetan Buddhism. It filled in as the colder time of year home of each progressive Dalai Lama from 1649-1959. The Potala Palace is likewise important for a historic ensemble that incorporates the adjoining Jokhang Temple Monastery and the Dalai Lama’s mid-year castle, Norbulingka, and appreciates legitimate insurance as a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site. Let’s get to know more about the Potala Palace in this article.
Potala Palace: History of the Palace
The historical backdrop of the Potala Palace starts in the seventh century when Songtsen Gampo, the 33rd king of Tibet, constructed a castle, potentially known as the White Palace and Red Palace, on the Red Hill for his union with Princess Wencheng, niece of the Chinese Emperor Taizhong of the Tang Dynasty. The royal residence wound up obliterated as a component of the 10th-century nationwide conflict that stopped the Tubo Kingdom — the 200-year time frame that saw the unification of Tibet and the ascent of Buddhism.
The White Palace:
The White Palace filled in as the Dalai Lama’s living quarters and numerous regulatory workplaces. The biggest room in the seven-story structure, the Eastern Main Hall, contains the Dalai Lama’s privileged position. Workplaces for government authorities involved the fifth and 6th floors. The Dalai Lama’s home is comprised of two condos on the highest level, known as the Eastern and Western Sunshine Apartments.
The Red Palace:
The Red Palace is the segment of the Potala Palace dedicated to the strict review, history, and Buddhist petition. This segment of the royal residence houses the remaining parts of eight Dalai Lamas in stupa-burial places, the biggest of which is dedicated to the fifth Dalai Lama. His commemoration lobby, which estimates at 680 square meters, is the biggest in the castle and highlights a few paintings, including one which portrays the Dalai Lama meeting Emperor Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty in 1652. The Red Palace likewise houses the Chogyal Dupup, a cave accepted to be Songsten Gampo’s place of reflection and one of just two components of the first castle that actually exists today.
Historic Ensemble of the Potala Palace
The Jokhang Temple Monastery was established by the system likewise in the seventh hundred years, to advance the Buddhist religion. Covering 2.5ha in the focal point of the old town of Lhasa, it contains an entry patio, yard, and Buddhist lobby encompassed by convenience for priests and storage facilities on every one of the four sides. The structures are developed of wood and stone and are remarkable instances of the Tibetan Buddhist style, with impacts from China, India, and Nepal. They house more than 3,000 pictures of Buddha and different gods and authentic figures alongside numerous different fortunes and compositions. Wall painting artworks portraying strict and authentic scenes cover the walls.
Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama’s previous summer castle developed in the eighteenth hundred years, is situated on the bank of the Lhasa River around 2km west of the Potala Palace in a rich green climate. It includes an enormous nursery with four castle edifices and a religious community along with different lobbies, and structures generally incorporated into the nursery format to make a remarkable show-stopper covering 36ha. The property is firmly connected with strict and policy-driven issues and has been a spot for examination and for consenting to political arrangements.
The Historic Ensemble of the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, and Norbulingka encapsulate the authoritative, strict, and emblematic elements of the Tibetan religious government through their area, format, and engineering. The magnificence and creativity of the engineering of these three locales, their rich ornamentation, and agreeable coordination in a striking scene, add to their Outstanding Universal Value.
Potala Palace – Design and Dimensions:
The Potala Palace looks like an enormous walled post, with its predominant designs — the White and Red Palace — incorporated 384 feet up Red Hill into its sheer stone face so the precipices give off an impression of being essential for the structures’ establishments. The designs, worked of stone and wood, draw upon Chinese and customary Himalayan engineering plans, most quite looking like its four-sided towers, a sign of approval for the way of life’s rectangular structures with level rooftops. Manufacturers didn’t involve nails in the royal residence’s development; all things being equal, they associated the soil and stone with basic apparatuses and used copper for support.
The Potala Palace possesses an area of in excess of 360,000 square meters on the Red Hill. Its principal segment — the White and Red Palaces — are 13 stories, or in excess of 300 feet in level, and open simply by crisscrossing flights of stairs. They contain 1,000 rooms, 10,000 places of worship, and in excess of 20,000 sculptures. Its stone walls are almost 10 feet thick, with establishments loaded up with copper to keep harm from quakes.
The present Potala Palace is otherwise called perhaps the most well-known exhibition hall on the planet with a huge assortment of sutras and significant verifiable reports inside. It is a decent spot to see the value of Tibetan culture and history.