Best Temples in China

Beijing has the best set of temples in any Chinese city, and the Temple of Heaven is the one to see first. Built in 1420, it is a park of about 270 hectares with three main buildings on a north-south axis: the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, a 38 m round hall of blue-tiled roofs (rebuilt after a fire in 1889), the Imperial Vault of Heaven with its Echo Wall, and the open marble Circular Mound Altar. The through ticket costs about 34 yuan in peak season (April to October); book online with your passport. Come at 6am, when the park opens and locals practise tai chi, dance and play cards in the long corridor, before the main halls open at 8am.

The Lama Temple (Yonghe Gong), in the north-east of the old city, is Beijing’s great Tibetan Buddhist monastery and still a working one. Its five halls rise in sequence to the Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses, where a Maitreya Buddha about 18 m tall, carved from one piece of white sandalwood, fills the building. Entry is about 25 yuan, including free incense. Across the road, the Temple of Confucius and the Guozijian, the old imperial academy, are quiet courtyards of steles and cypress trees.

The White Cloud Temple west of the centre is the headquarters of the Quanzhen school of Taoism, with resident priests in topknots and a temple fair at Chinese New Year. In the hutongs, Zhihua Temple has 15th-century Ming wooden architecture and ritual music performances, and the white dagoba of Miaoying Temple is a Yuan-dynasty landmark. Further out, the Big Bell Temple holds a 46-tonne Ming bell covered in Buddhist scripture.

Buddhism reached China along the Silk Road, and the monks and merchants who brought it carved temples into the cliffs. The Mogao Caves outside Dunhuang in Gansu are the greatest: about 735 caves cut over a thousand years, about 490 of them with painted murals and statues. You visit with a guide, seeing around eight caves after two films at the visitor centre, on a timed ticket with a daily quota. Book well ahead in summer, and expect no photography inside the caves.

The Longmen Grottoes, 12 km south of Luoyang in Henan, line both banks of the Yi River with about 100,000 statues. The highlight is Fengxian Temple, a cliff niche with a 17 m seated Vairocana Buddha from the Tang dynasty. Go in the morning, then walk across the river for the view back at the cliff; entry is about 90 yuan. Near Datong in Shanxi, the Yungang Grottoes are older, from the 5th century, with colossal Buddhas carved under Indian and Central Asian influence.

There are more if you are hooked. The Maijishan Grottoes cling to a haystack-shaped hill near Tianshui, reached by cliff walkways; the Bingling Temple caves near Lanzhou are reached by boat across a reservoir; and the Dazu Rock Carvings near Chongqing, from the Tang to the Song, are vivid scenes of everyday life and hell. The Leshan Giant Buddha in Sichuan, 71 m tall and carved into a riverside cliff in the 8th century, is the largest stone Buddha in the world; walk the stair down beside it, or see it from a boat on the river.

The cities of the Yellow River were China’s early capitals, and their temples are among the oldest. Xi’an’s Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, built in 652 to hold scriptures that the monk Xuanzang brought back from India, stands in a working temple with a fountain show on the square outside in the evening. The smaller Small Wild Goose Pagoda is free with a booking. The Great Mosque of Xi’an in the Muslim Quarter is built like a Chinese temple, with courtyards, a pagoda-style minaret and calligraphy in Arabic and Chinese.

Outside Luoyang, the White Horse Temple is said to be the first Buddhist temple in China, founded in the 1st century, with halls built by India, Thailand and Myanmar in its grounds. The Shaolin Monastery on Mount Song, about 90 minutes from Luoyang or Zhengzhou, is where Chan (Zen) Buddhism and kung fu meet. The temple itself is heavily restored and the kung fu shows are touristy, but the Pagoda Forest, a field of over 200 brick tomb pagodas of abbots, is the real thing. Entry is about 80 yuan.

In Kaifeng, the Iron Pagoda is an 11th-century brick tower tiled to look like iron. In Shandong, Qufu is the home town of Confucius, and the Temple of Confucius there, with the family mansion and cemetery, is the largest Confucian complex in China.

Shanxi has more surviving ancient wooden buildings than anywhere in China, because it was spared the worst fighting and the Cultural Revolution’s damage. The Hanging Temple, about 65 km from Datong, is the province’s showpiece: a 1,500-year-old cluster of halls on wooden stilts against a cliff face of Mount Heng, linked by narrow walkways and shared by Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian shrines. Visitor numbers on the walkways are limited, so arrive early. Combine it with the Yungang Grottoes on a day trip from Datong.

On the way south, the Pagoda of Fogong Temple at Yingxian, built in 1056 and 67 m tall, is the oldest and tallest all-wooden pagoda in the world, held together without nails. Mount Wutai, further east, is the Buddhist mountain of Manjushri and has the greatest concentration of temples in China, some 50 of them in a high valley around Taihuai village. Foguang Temple, from 857, and Nanchan Temple, from 782, on the edges of the area, are the oldest wooden halls in the country. Near Pingyao, the Zhenguo Temple has a 10th-century hall with original painted sculptures.

Chinese Buddhism has four sacred mountains, each the home of a bodhisattva. Mount Wutai in Shanxi is Manjushri’s. Mount Emei in Sichuan belongs to Samantabhadra: from the foot at Baoguo Temple, a stairway climbs past monasteries where you can stay the night to the Golden Summit at 3,077 m, with a gilded statue and views over the clouds. Buses and a cable car do most of the climb, and the Leshan Giant Buddha is an hour away. Putuoshan, an island in the Zhoushan archipelago off Ningbo, is Guanyin’s, with a 33 m bronze statue of the goddess facing the sea. Mount Jiuhua in Anhui, Ksitigarbha’s, is close to Huangshan.

Taoism has its own peaks. The Wudang Mountains in Hubei are the home of Taoist martial arts, with a Ming palace complex and a gilded bronze hall on the summit. Mount Qingcheng near Chengdu is a short, wooded climb past Taoist shrines, and Mount Tai, the most sacred of the five great mountains, has temples on its summit. Our national parks guide covers the climbs.

The Jokhang in Lhasa is the holiest temple in Tibetan Buddhism, home of the Jowo, a statue of the Buddha said to have been brought by a Chinese princess in the 7th century. Pilgrims prostrate themselves at the entrance, and the Barkhor around the temple is a constant clockwise stream of worshippers. Inside, the dim chapels are lit by butter lamps; photography is banned. Above the city, the Potala Palace, the former winter home of the Dalai Lamas, is part palace, part temple, and requires a timed ticket booked through your agency.

Lhasa’s great monasteries are just outside the city. At Sera, monks debate in a courtyard in the afternoon, slapping their hands as they make a point; it usually runs from around 3pm every day except Sunday. Drepung was once the largest monastery in the world, and Samye, south of Lhasa, was the first in Tibet, in the 8th century. In Shigatse, Tashilhunpo is the seat of the Panchen Lama, with a giant Maitreya statue. All of these need the Tibet Travel Permit and a guided tour; see our China visa guide.

You can see Tibetan Buddhism without a permit outside the Tibet region. Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, Gansu, has one of the longest prayer-wheel koras anywhere and hundreds of monks; Kumbum Monastery near Xining is known for its yak-butter sculptures. In Sichuan, Litang, Tagong and Langmusi have big monasteries in grassland towns. In Chengde, the Putuo Zongcheng Temple is a scaled-down copy of the Potala built for the emperor, and the Puning Temple has a wooden Guanyin over 20 m tall.

In Hangzhou, Lingyin Temple is one of the largest Buddhist temples in China, entered through the Feilai Feng cliffs, a hillside of over 300 stone carvings; both have been free since December 2025, but you must book online at least a day ahead. The Leifeng Pagoda, rebuilt over the ruins of the old one, looks over West Lake. In Shanghai, the Jade Buddha Temple has two Burmese jade Buddhas, and the gilded Jing’an Temple stands among skyscrapers on Nanjing West Road.

Further south, Quanzhou in Fujian was the great medieval port, and the Qingjing Mosque, founded in 1009, stands near Hindu carvings and Buddhist temples from the same era. In Guangzhou, the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees has a painted nine-storey pagoda, and the Huaisheng Mosque is one of the oldest in China.

Hong Kong has some of the busiest folk temples in China. At Wong Tai Sin, worshippers shake bamboo fortune sticks and have them read by fortune-tellers next door. On Lantau, the 34 m bronze Big Buddha sits above Ngong Ping at the top of 268 steps, reached by cable car or bus. The wooden Chi Lin Nunnery and the hillside Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery at Sha Tin are free. In Macau, the A-Ma Temple honours the sea goddess who gave the city its name.

Most temples open from about 8am to 5pm, with some, like the Temple of Heaven’s park, open from 6am. Big sites and the grottoes now sell real-name tickets linked to your passport, usually through official WeChat mini-programs or travel apps such as Trip.com, and some, including Mogao and the Potala, have daily quotas. Small city temples usually sell tickets at the gate. Audio guides in English are common at the major sites, and many grottoes require guided visits.

Temples fit easily into a city trip by metro, but the grottoes and mountains are day trips at least: high-speed trains reach Luoyang, Datong, Emeishan and Xi’an, and buses or taxis cover the last stretch; our getting around China guide has the details. For the order to string them together, see our China itineraries, and for the art and objects taken from these sites, the museums guide.

Temples are busiest at Chinese New Year, on the 1st and 15th of each lunar month, and on bodhisattva festivals, when Putuoshan and Lama Temple are packed with worshippers. These are fascinating times to visit if you do not mind crowds. Tibetan festivals such as Saga Dawa in May or June and the giant thangka unveiling at Drepung during the Shoton festival in August draw huge crowds.

Dress modestly, with shoulders and knees covered, especially at monasteries and mosques. Shoes stay on in most Chinese temples, but come off in some Tibetan chapels and at mosques. Do not touch statues, sit with your feet pointing at an altar or climb on railings. Many halls ban photography inside, including the Jokhang, the Potala, the Lama Temple’s main halls and the Mogao caves; look for signs, and ask before photographing monks or worshippers.

In Tibetan areas, walk clockwise around temples, stupas and prayer wheels, and spin prayer wheels with your right hand. Mosques admit non-Muslims outside prayer times, with women expected to cover their heads in prayer halls. Incense is usually provided free at the entrance; you do not need to buy the giant sticks sold outside, and polite refusal to sellers and fortune-tellers is fine. Never use a drone at religious sites without permission.