Longmen Grottoes

1 min read

The Longmen Grottoes or Longmen Caves are one of the finest examples of Chinese Buddhist art.Housing tens of thousands of statues of Buddha and his disciples，they are located 12 kilometers south of present day Luoyang in Henan Province.The images，many once painted，were carved into caves excavated from the limestone cliffs of the Xiangshan and Longmenshan mountains，running east and west.The alternative name of“Dragon’s Gate Grottoes”derives from the resemblance of the 2 hills that check th flow of the Yi River to the typical”Chinese gate towers”that once marked the entrance to Luoyang from the south.There are as many as 100，000 statues within the1，400 caves，ranging from 1 inch to 57 feet in height.The area also contains nearly 2，500 stelae and inscriptions，hence the name”Forest of Ancient Stelae”，as well as over 60 Buddhist pagodas.In 2000 the site was inscribed upon the UNESCO World Heritage List as“an outstanding manifestation of human artistic creativity”.