应县木塔

Why this place

The Sakyamuni Pagoda at Yingxian is 67 metres tall, built in 1056 entirely of timber — no iron nails — using 54 different types of interlocking bracket set. It has survived nearly a thousand years of earthquakes and is the tallest and oldest multi-storey timber building in the world.

What to see

• The pagoda itself, and the layers of bracket sets that hold it up
• The Buddhist statues on each storey, visible from the ground floor
• Chongfu Temple, which the pagoda belongs to
• The old town of Yingxian, and the Northern Qi Great Wall near Daixian

What to eat

• Shanxi noodles and millet cooking — this is plateau country
• Sesame flatbreads baked in clay ovens

How to plan

Half a day from Shuozhou or Datong.

Best time

May–October

Practical tips

• Visitors can no longer climb the pagoda — the structure is being monitored; the ground floor and the exterior are the visit