Giant Wild Goose Pagoda

Da Ci'en Temple took shape in 648, the twenty-second year of the Tang Zhenguan era, when Crown Prince Li Zhi enlarged an older temple on the site to honor his mother, Empress Wende, and renamed it Ci'en Temple. In 652, the third year of the Yonghui era, Xuanzang had a pagoda built in the western court of the temple to keep the scriptures he brought back from India. It was first called the Ci'en Temple Pagoda. In the Chang'an years under Wu Zetian the original tower, its brick joints overgrown with weeds, was damaged; it was pulled down and rebuilt as a seven-story square pavilion-style pagoda, though accounts differ on the number of levels at that time. In the repairs of 1604, the thirty-second year of the Ming Wanli reign, the stairs on every level were refitted and a casing about 60 centimeters thick was added around the tower. The present temple is laid out as a front temple, a central pagoda and a rear courtyard.^1,2

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is a pavilion-style brick pagoda on a square plan, standing on a base about 4.2 meters high. The bottom level of the body measures 25 meters along each side, and each level above it narrows in turn, giving the whole a pyramid-like profile. At the joints between levels, brick has been laid in imitation of timber beams, lintels, bracket sets and columns. The first tower had five levels, brick outside and earth within; the casing now seen around it was added under the Ming, and the stair inside has 248 steps, its flights on every level refitted in 1604. The pagoda stands in the middle of the temple, and the temple's buildings run from south to north through the gate, the bell and drum towers and the main hall, with the Xuanzang Sanzang Courtyard behind the pagoda.^1,2