Longmen Grottos enjoys a long-standing history and a far and wide reputation in the world. Today, it has become a popular tourist destination which attracts millions of people every year.

Long-standing History of Longmen Grottoes

Enjoying a history of thousand years, Longmen Grottoes has long been hailed as the Four Great Grottoes in China. The construction of Longmen Grottoes started in 493. The grottoes were built upon the Longmen Mountain which was believed to be a holy spot for the grottoes according to Chinese Fengshui theory. It took hundreds of years to complete the whole grotto group which stretches thousands of meters upon the mountain. The majority of the Longmen Grottoes is believed to be carved during Tang Dynasty with only a minority of them being carved during North Wei Dynasty. Due to this reason, the grottoes are quite different in the styles of the Buddhist statues. The parts which were carved during North Wei look slim and neat, while rest of the grottoes carved in Tang dynasty are plumper. The difference has its historical roots. Tang Dynasty is the most prosperous dynasty in culture, economy and politic in Chinese history, therefore everything appeared in Tang Dynasty looks kind of larger in sizes and shapes.

Features of Longmen Grotos

In addition, Longmen Grottoes is also a treasure house of Chinese calligraphy. There are a large number of inscriptions found in Longmen Grottoes. The inscriptions show the reason why the grottoes were carved. Nowadays, these inscriptions play a key role in studying the cultures of Tang Dynasty and the calligraphy. More importantly, Longmen Grottoes also houses a large number of antiques ranging from politics, economy, culture, to religion, arts, architecture, calligraphy, as well as music, medicine, costume, etc. Therefore Longmen Grottoes is regarded as a treasure house and a museum. Up to this day, over 2000 cave shrines, over 2860 pieces of inscriptions, over 70 Buddhist pagodas and more than 100,000 statues of Buddhas are found in Longmen Grottoes. These historical and cultural treasures earned Longmen Grottoes one of the richest Buddhism treasure houses in China. On November 30 of 2000, Longmen Grottoes was included into the World Cultural Heritage list by the UNESCO.

All in all, Longmen grottoes are truly worthwhile seeing with its rich collection of historical and cultural relics and a visit to Longmen Grottoes will give you an insight into the essence of Buddhism culture.