Guangde Temple stands in Xiangcheng District near the Longzhong area, outside Xiangyang’s old walled centre. Its history includes changes of name and repeated building campaigns. The Duobao Pagoda gives the monastery a particularly recognisable architectural centre. Around that object, the temple’s halls, trees and courtyard spaces provide a setting in which a visitor can read details at close range.
From the journal
The Pagoda in Guangde Temple
At Guangde Temple outside Xiangyang, the Duobao Pagoda brings brick, stone, niches and carved Buddhist figures into a distinctive architectural form.
In the same city · Xiangyang ↗
A temple beside the Longzhong landscape
Looking at the pagoda
The Ming-period Duobao Pagoda combines a substantial base with a distinctive arrangement of tower forms and carved images. Brick and stone imitate some details familiar from timber architecture, while niches and Buddhist figures direct attention around the structure. It rewards looking at how the parts join, rather than reading it simply as a tall marker in a temple courtyard.
A building kept through change
The pagoda is a nationally protected cultural relic. Its durable brick and stone have carried the work of its makers through changes in the surrounding monastery. Niches, figures and the transitions between tower forms reward a slow circuit around the structure. The temple’s identity becomes clear through this particular object, its materials and the arrangement of images within a place still bearing the name Guangde.
