Longmen Grottoes Travel Guide

The grottoes and niches of Longmen, located twelve kilometers south of Luoyang, contain the largest and most impressive collection of Chinese art of the late Northern Wei and Tang Dynasties (316-907).

These works, entirely devoted to the Buddhist religion, represent the high point of Chinese stone carving. The grottoes are cut into precipitous cliffs on both banks of the Yishui River, and stretch for over a thousand meters from south to north. The existing 2,100 caves and niches contain more than 100,000 statues of Buddhist figures in various postures, the largest rising over seventeen meters and the smallest only two centimeters.

There are also 3,600 inscribed tablets and forty pagodas here. The stone sculptures at Longmen represent a new height on the art of stone carving and the development of Buddhism in China. The largest Buddhist monastery at Longmen, the Fengxian Temple, in particular, contains the most exquisite works of art among the grottoes and represents the best stone carving techniques of the Tang Dynasty Emperor Gao Zong (650-683) gave to his wife, Empress Wu Zetian for cosmetics.