Giant Wild Goose Pagoda

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda or Big Wild Goose Pagoda (Dàyàn tǎ) is a monumental Buddhist pagoda located in southern Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. It was built c. AD 652 during the Tang dynasty, when Xi'an (then known as Chang'an) was the imperial capital. The pagoda originally had five stories. It was rebuilt in 704 during the reign of the empress Wu Zetian. Its current exterior brick façade was added during the Ming dynasty (r. 1368–1644). One of the pagoda's many functions was to hold sutras and figurines of Gautama Buddha that were brought to China from India by the 7th-century Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator Xuanzang. Today, the interior walls of the pagoda feature engraved statues of Buddha by the renowned 7th-century artist Yan Liben. This pagoda was added to the World Heritage List, along with many other sites along the Silk Road, as part of the "Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor" site in 2014.

Building data from Wikidata (CC0); heights normalised. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).