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vendredi, mai 22, 2009

Potala







"The Potala Palace started to be built in 637, in Lhasa. It was named after Mount Potala. The Potala Palace was the chief residence of the Dalai Lama until the 14th Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, India, after an invasion and failed uprising in 1959. Today the Potala Palace has been converted into a museum by the Chinese". And the monks just act as museum guards . In bigger numbers the soldiers try to remain as invisible as possible. It was very very difficult for me to go up the 999 steps leading to the 1rst courtyard but taking my time I managed to go to the very top . The visit is limited by the Chinese at 1hour including the stairs ! Tashi obtained half and hour more for me. It became an hour ! We could not visit the palace really but only around 12 rooms out of the 999 rooms the palace counts.And that was enough to get an idea of the past splendour. Many treasures, thrônes, statues, scriptures. The palace was slightly damaged during the Tibetan uprising against the Chinese in 1959, when Chinese shells were launched into the palace's windows. It also escaped damage during the Cultural Revolution in 1966 through the personal intervention of Zhou Enlai, who was then the Premier of the People's Republic of China but who personally opposed the revolution. Still, almost all of the over 100,000 volumes of scriptures, historical documents and other works of art were either removed, damaged or destroyed. .... Still it is probably one of the richest Palace in the world , now inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1994. The building measures 400 metres east-west and 350 metres north-south, with sloping stone walls averaging 3 m. thick, and 5 m. (more than 16 ft) thick at the base, and with copper poured into the foundations to help proof it against earthquakes. Thirteen stories of buildings – containing over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and about 200,000 statues – soar 117 metres (384 ft) on top of Marpo Ri, the "Red Hill", rising more than 300 m (about 1,000 ft) in total above the valley floor.[3] Tradition has it that the three main hills of Lhasa represent the "Three Protectors of Tibet." May they protect this incredible fortress.

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