Lhasa travel guide

Top 10 sights in Lhasa

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1. 

   1© Ondřej Žváček · CC BY 2.5

   Potala Palace

   The winter palace of the Dalai Lamas, rebuilt from 1645 on a hill above Lhasa in thirteen storeys and over a thousand rooms, with walls up to five metres thick. It has been a museum since 1959; entry is by timed ticket and the climb starts at three thousand seven hundred metres.

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2. 

   2© onwardtibet.org · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Jokhang

   The most sacred temple in Tibetan Buddhism, founded in the 640s to house a Buddha image brought by a Chinese princess, and the point towards which pilgrims prostrate themselves. The Barkhor circuit runs clockwise around it and is walked by thousands every day.

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3. 

   3© John Hill at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Norbulingka

   The Dalai Lamas' summer palace and park, laid out from 1755 on the western edge of Lhasa, with several palaces in a walled garden of forty hectares. The fourteenth Dalai Lama left from here in March 1959, and Tibetans picnic in the grounds during the Shoton festival.

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4. 

   4© Gerd Eichmann · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Drepung Monastery

   One of the three great Gelug monasteries, founded in 1416 at the foot of a mountain west of Lhasa, and once the largest monastery in the world with perhaps ten thousand monks. Its whitewashed halls climb the slope; a giant thangka is unrolled on the hillside each summer.

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5. 

   5© Antoine Taveneaux · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sera Monastery

   A Gelug monastery of 1419 north of Lhasa, one of the great three, known for the debating courtyard where monks argue doctrine in the afternoon with clapped hands and stamped feet. Visitors are admitted to watch, and it is the most animated thing in Tibetan Buddhism.

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6. 

   6© Antoine Taveneaux · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Lhasa Great Mosque

   The main mosque of Lhasa, in the quarter southeast of the Barkhor, serving a Muslim community descended from Kashmiri and Central Asian traders who settled here from the seventeenth century. Halal restaurants fill the surrounding lanes.

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7. 

   7© Dieter Schuh 18:55, 30. Sep. 2009 (CEST) · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Ramoche Temple

   A temple founded in the seventh century, second in importance in Lhasa only to the Jokhang, and built to house the Buddha image brought by the Nepali princess Bhrikuti. Its main figure is an eighth-century bronze of the young Sakyamuni.

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8. 

   8© drnan tu from Shenzhen, China · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Nechung

   The seat of the state oracle of Tibet, ten minutes' walk from Drepung, where a medium entered trance to advise the government on decisions of state — including the Dalai Lama's flight in 1959. The building was wrecked in the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt.

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9. 

   9© en:user:John Hill · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Yerpa monastery

   A monastery east of Lhasa built around meditation caves used since the seventh century, once home to some three hundred monks. Padmasambhava and Songtsen Gampo are both said to have meditated in the caves, which are still visited by pilgrims.

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10. 

    10© Fanghong · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Tibet Museum

    The official museum of the Tibet Autonomous Region, opened in 1999 and rebuilt since, holding over five hundred thousand objects — thangkas, bronzes, seals and manuscripts. Its historical framing is the Chinese state's, which is part of what visitors should know going in.

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1. 

   1© Jack Versloot · CC BY 2.0

   Monument to the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet

   A monument on the square below the Potala, unveiled in 2001 to mark what the Chinese state calls the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951. It stands just outside the World Heritage buffer zone, which was a condition of building it there.

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2. 

   2© Beger, Bruno · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

   Xoi Parish

   The village at the foot of the Potala that held the offices and houses of the Tibetan government's officials, along with the pillar recording the eighth-century treaty with China. Most of it was cleared in the 1990s to make the plaza; a few buildings survive as a museum.

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3. 

   3© Reurinkjan · CC BY 2.0

   Pabonka Hermitage

   A hermitage on a rock northwest of Lhasa, founded in the seventh century by Songtsen Gampo and the most important of Sera's dependencies. The first Tibetan writing is said to have been carved in a cave beneath it.

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4. 

   4© Goldmund100 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Catholic Church of Lhasa

   The first Catholic church in Tibet, built by Capuchin missionaries in Lhasa in 1726 with the permission of the local ruler. It was destroyed in 1745 when the mission was expelled after twenty years of very few conversions, and nothing of it remains.

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   Kundeling Monastery

   A Gelug monastery founded about 1794 west of the Potala, whose abbots hold a reincarnation lineage traced to 1402. It was one of the four regent monasteries whose lamas governed Tibet between Dalai Lamas.

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6. 

   6© John Hill · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Muru Nyingba Monastery

   A small monastery hidden directly behind the Jokhang, reached through a lane off the Barkhor, which served as the Lhasa residence of the state oracle. It is quiet in a way nothing else in that quarter is.

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7. 

   7© Antoine Taveneaux · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Ani Tsankhung Nunnery

   A Gelug nunnery in the old city, built in the fifteenth century on a site where Songtsen Gampo is said to have meditated in the seventh. The nuns support themselves by making clothes and printing prayer flags, and run a tea house.

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8. 

   8© Esiymbro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Tsomon Ling

   One of the four regent temples of Lhasa, founded in the seventeenth century after the fifth Dalai Lama united religious and political authority, standing south of the Ramoche. Its regents ruled Tibet during each Dalai Lama's minority.

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   Trode Khangsar

   A small temple over three hundred years old in the old city, dedicated to the protector deity Dorje Shugden — a figure whose worship the fourteenth Dalai Lama discouraged in the 1970s, which split parts of the Gelug school. That dispute is why the building is contested.

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10. 

    10© 獅眠洞 · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Lhasa Small Mosque

    A small mosque of the early twentieth century in a lane off the Barkhor, used by the Khache — Tibetan Muslims descended from Kashmiri traders, who speak Tibetan and have been part of Lhasa for four centuries.

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