Hanging Temple (Xuankong Si)
How did builders around 491 CE pin a forty-hall timber monastery to a sheer cliff dozens of metres above a gorge, using nothing but beams wedged into the rock, and engineer it so cleverly that it has ridden out fifteen centuries of earthquakes, floods, and weather?
c. 491 CE, late Northern Wei dynasty (later expanded and rebuilt through the Ming and Qing) · Mount Heng, Hunyuan County, Shanxi, ChinaAdded July 2026