Tips for a perfect tour in Longmen

Updated: 2015-08-26

Best route recommendation:

Dashimen Entrance—Pinewood (Songlin)—West Hill Grottoes—East Hill Grottoes—Xiangshan Temple—Baiyuan Garden—Dongshan Hotel

Dashimen

Dashimen Entrance of Longmen Grottoes [Photo/Longmen Grottoes on WeChat]

Dashimen, designed by Zhang Jinqiu, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, is a Tang-style stone entrance area of Longmen Grottoes. This was built in April, 2015 and has become a new landmark of the Longmen Grottoes.

The stone gate sits astride the axis of the old city of Luoyang. It has a Tang architectural style and features. It has been made out of blue stone to reflect the elegance of the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907). This has even made many people to name the gate "Time-travel Gate" as it gives visitors a feeling of traveling back in time to the Tang Dynasty.

Pinewood

Pinewood, or Songlin in Chinese, is a garden featuring the royal style of the Tang Dynasty. It has been designed by Zhang, a well-respected Chinese female architect. The first thing that you can see from the Dashimen gate is the royal garden which has hundreds of trees of about 40 variety, different shapes and colors. Pine, ginkgo and lilac are the main varieties of floras found in this garden.

Fengxian Temple

Fengxian Temple is the largest cliff-niche in Longmen Grottoes. It is also the most representative work of Longmen’s carvings in Tang Dynasty. The total height of the main statue “Grand Losana” is 17.14 meters, with its head 4 meters high and its ear 1.90 meters long.

The Fengxian Temple [Photo/Longmen Grottoes on WeChat]

Guyang Cave

The Guyang Cave, which is 11.20 meters high, 7.27 meters wide and 11.83 meters deep, is the oldest cave with richest contents in the Longmen Grottoes. It is also a cave which houses the majority of the statues that royal members of Northern Wei(AD 386-534) had vowed to build.

Model calligraphy written during the Northern Wei period in Guyang Cave [Photo/Longmen Grottoes on WeChat]

Of the well-known “Longmen Twenty Pieces” -- model calligraphy written during the Northern Wei period, 19 have been kept in the Guyang Cave. These characters are of good and brilliant shape, written in Li and Kai styles. Hence they can be labeled as top works of the same kind, which are favored for their special charm by lovers of calligraphy both from home and abroad.

The latest Internet Plus Longmen smart tourism WeChat flatform makes it possible for visitors to receive tailor-made blessing words in Northern Wei calligraphy, by simply using the “Shake” function of a smartphone.