About 20 km to the southwest of Xian, It is an important destination for the Buddhists. It was built in 669 AD by Tang Gaozong as a memorial to the Tang monk Xuanzang, together with a tall brick pagoda covering his remains. The tall central pagoda is a beautiful five-storey brick structure, with brackets in relief, in imitation of the old wooden-style pagodas. A small pavilion next to the pagoda has a modern copy of a stone engraving of Xuanzang. On the either side of the principal pagoda are those of Xuanzangs two translation assistants. Each is three-storey. The pagodas all remain its original style and form a harmonious complex. They are situated in a walled enclosure which named the Cien Pagoda Courtyard. Except some Buddha statues dating from the Ming dynasty, the bell and drum towers, the Great Hall of the Buddha, the Preaching Hall and the library were all built in the 1920s and 1930s. The library contains a white jade Buddha from Burma, some Tang-dynasty Buddhist sutras in Sanskrit and editions of translated works, including those of Xuan Zang.
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