Longmen Grottoes 龙门石窟 1

龙门石窟

The Longmen Grottoes are located near Luoyang on either bank of the Yi River in Henan Province. They are made up of approximately 1,400 caves and 100,000 statues. Of course some are really tiny as you can see in the pictures, but some of the larger ones are well over 50 ft high. And although most of the notable caves are on the west hill, there are caves located on both sides of the river. From what I understand, construction began in 493 AD and kept going until the 12th century. Pretty amazing stuff. It's really interesting how the natural texture and pattern on some of the cave walls "interact" or add to the sculpture themselves. I wonder if the sculptors had that in mind when choosing the location and placement of each statue. I think probably not, because a lot of the statues and their surroundings seem to have been painted at one point or another, which means you wouldn't be able to see the natural cave walls. So it might just be a happy accident now that the paint deteriorated. As you can see, many of the statues are also damaged or missing heads... it seems like a lot of this happened during the Cultural Revolution. Some of it is also due to thiefs and collectors, and apparently two murals were also removed and now hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Anyhow, if you want to read up on the grottoes some more you can check out the UNESCO World Heritage site: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1003