Three Circuits, Three Scales of Lhasa

Lhasa’s three named circuits begin with a small scale. Nangkhor surrounds the central shrine of Shakyamuni within Jokhang. Its relationship is to an image and the religious spaces immediately around it. A circuit here is a way of moving through a sacred interior, with an identifiable centre that gives the movement its meaning.

The names are also a way of understanding space. Rather than treating every route around Jokhang as the same walk, they distinguish an inner passage from the streets outside. The centre remains important as the circle expands, but the setting and the people’s relationship to it change.

Barkhor is the middle circuit around Jokhang’s exterior. The streets radiating from this temple-centred route are commonly called Barkhor Street as well. Shops, houses and courtyards give the circuit an urban setting, where religious movement and other daily activities occupy neighbouring spaces.

A 2024 report describes more than thirty streets and lanes extending around the temple. That network helps explain why Barkhor is both a named circuit and the centre of a larger old-city district. A person can follow a route around the temple, then turn into a lane whose buildings belong to another history of residence, work and trade.

Lingkhor expands the frame to include the Potala, Chakpori and Ramoche as well as the Jokhang-centred old city. The Chengguan district’s description presents these as three circles moving outward. Their different sizes connect a shrine, a temple precinct and a city of related religious places.

This vocabulary offers a useful alternative to seeing Lhasa as a list of isolated monuments. A route connects things through movement, while a circuit maintains a relationship with a centre. Together the three names describe a city understood through successive scales, from a closely enclosed sacred space to the open distances between major landmarks.