Forest of Stone Tablets Museum Picture.

The Forest of Stone Tablets Museum, used to the Temple of Confucius, houses the largest collection of stone tablets in China. The museum mainly consists of works of literature and philosophy, historical records, calligraphy and pictorial stones. The museum was originally built in Northern Song dynasty (1090 A.D.) when a large Confucian collection of steles cut in A.D. 837 known as the oldest existing texts of the Confucian classics was moved here for safekeeping. It gained the present name in the 18th century and boasted the largest collection of its kind in China. One of the more striking exhibits is the Forest of Steles, the heaviest collection of books in the world with the earliest of these more than 2,000 large engraved stone tablets dates from the Han dynasty. With the successive collections of Steles in the Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, it was gradually renovated and expanded like a forest of steles. The Popular Stele of Daqin Nestorianism, which can be recognizable by the small cross at the tip and engraved in 781 A.D. marks the opening of a Nestorian church. The Monk Bu Kong Stele in Tang dynasty (A.D. 781) is noteworthy for its Buddhist value…

Maoling Tomb is the burial site of Emperor Wudi in Han Dynasty, known as one of the five largest imperial mausoleums in China. The mausoleum is located 40 kilometers from Xian. The current measurement shows that Maoling is 46.5 meters high, 39.5 meters from east to west, 35.5 meters from north to south on the top and 240 meters long at the base of the tomb. Emperor Wudi was the fifth ruling monarch of the Western Han Dynasty, going by the name Liu Che (156 BC-87 BC). Until he was nearly seventy years old, he had reigned for 50 years (140 BC-87 BC), being one of the longest-reigning emperors in China's history. During his reign, the Han Dynasty was at the height of its power and splendor. To consolidate power over the unified feudal states, he adopted a series of political, economic, and military measures in order to strengthen and consolidate the autocratic centralized ruling system

Qianling Tomb is where the third Tang-dynasty emperor and his empress were buried together. The third emperor was Li Zhi (Gaozong) and his empress was Empress Wu Zetian. Wu Zetian was the only female monarch in the Chinese history. Qianling Tomb was built in 684 A.D and is located on Liangshan Hill. The scope of the tomb is very large with the precincts of the tomb and gardens totaling an area of 2,400,000 square meters. The tomb consists of three peaks: the two on the southern side are artificial, but the higher northern peak is natural and is the main part of the tomb. The inner city, about 240 square meters, followed the rectangular layout of Chang'an city with four gates on each side named clockwise: the Phoenix in the south, the Tortoise north, the Black Dragon east and the White Tiger west. In the front of the tomb is the Spirit Way along which is lined by huge stone statues of animals and human. They demonstrate remarkable achievements of the sculptural arts during the prime of the Tang dynasty

The Mosque at Huajue Lane is the largest in Xi'an, and it is also one of the earliest built on a comparatively large scale, and the best preserved mosque in China.

With a total area of more that 13,000 square meters and the buildings covering over 6,000 square meters, the Great Mosque was built in the shape of a rectangle from the east to the west, and is divided into four courtyards.

In the first courtyards, there is an old wooden archway standing opposite a huge screen wall decorated with the clay- brick- carvings. It has special upturned eaves, many layers of brackets, and glazed roof tiles, so that it is very magnificent. The archway was built at the beginning of the 17th century, dating back to over 360 years. On both sides of the archway, there is some old furniture on display made in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Small Wild Goose Pagoda, surrounded by Jianfu Temple, used to be the imperial temple in Tang Dynasty. Along with the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, it was an important landmark in Xian, capital of the Tang Dynasty. Since it was smaller and built later than the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, it was named as the Small Wild Goose Pagoda. It was built in 707 during the Tang Dynasty. The temple was the place where the great translator Monk Yijing of the Tang Dynasty translated Buddhist scriptures. Small Wild Goose Pagoda is a multi-eave, square, brick structure of fifteen storeys. Originally it was 46 meters high, but now it is 43.3 meters high due to the collapse of earthen layers. It has a square pedestal and a huge first storey that measures 11.38 meters long each. The shape and structure of the pagoda are typical of early multi-eave pagodas and influenced many brick and stone runty-eave pagodas built later in other parts of the country…fashioninn4us.blogspot.com