 |
| Bagan- Pagodas and Stupas |
 |
| Pagodas and Stupas across the Lake of Bagan |
 |
| Bagan's Many Pagodas and Stupas |
 |
| Shadow of Aureum Palace Resort's Viewing Tower |
Bagan is the most remarkable city because here you find a multitude
of temples, thickly studded with pagodas of all shapes and sizes and the
ground is covered so thickly with crumbling remnants of vanishing
shrines.
Bagan is the seat of the 1st Myanmar Empire
founded by King Anawrahta in the mid 11th century. Although legends say
that there were supposed to be more than 400,000 pagodas here then,
there are now about 2,000 situated in an area about 16 miles square and
under the care of the Archeological Department. Many are in ruins but
inside these structures beautiful wall paintings are still very fresh as
if painted only yesterday. Families erected these to honor their dead.
Bagan, a city that has changed little in the past century, is a graveyard of medieval Burmese culture. There is nowhere the sight so striking as the view across the plain of Bagan, one red-brick pagoda after another, with an occasional white spire reaching heavenward. Our hotel built a viewing tower for tourists to see the large vista across the plain. Now that tourism is opening up in Myanmar things will be changing all over the country, even here in Bagan.
More about this remarkable city and hotel in my next post!
No comments:
Post a Comment