Potala Palace

The Potala Palace is the highest palace in the world — a thirteen-story, 1,000-room fortress-monastery rising 117 meters above Lhasa's Marpo Ri (Red Hill) at an altitude of 3,700 meters. For three centuries, it served as the winter residence of the Dalai Lama and the administrative center of Tibetan government. It is the supreme symbol of Tibetan Buddhism and one of the most architecturally stunning buildings on Earth. The palace consists of two main sections: the White Palace (Potrang Karpo), containing the Dalai Lama's living quarters and government offices, and the Red Palace (Potrang Marpo), dedicated entirely to religious study and Buddhist prayer. The Red Palace contains the gold-encased funeral stupas of eight Dalai Lamas — towering structures covered in hundreds of kilograms of gold and studded with thousands of precious stones. The current structure was begun in 1645 by the Fifth Dalai Lama, Lobsang Gyatso, known as "The Great Fifth," and completed under the regency of Desi Sangye Gyatso in 1694. But the site's sacred history extends much further back: the original palace was built in 637 AD by Songtsen Gampo, the king who unified Tibet. The Potala contains over 200,000 statues, 10,000 painted scrolls (thangkas), murals covering 10,000 square meters, and an extensive library of Buddhist scriptures. It has survived wars, earthquakes, and political upheavals across 13 centuries, standing as an indomitable testament to Tibetan faith. UNESCO inscribed the Potala Palace in 1994. It remains one of the most revered pilgrimage destinations in the Buddhist world.