Nanyue Temple (南岳大庙) stands at the north end of the old town of Nanyue, at the foot of Hengshan, and is the largest and most complete palace-style temple among the Five Sacred Mountains. It is arranged as a long north-south axis of gates, pavilions and halls, with eight Daoist temples and eight Buddhist monasteries ranged on its two flanks, so that Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism are housed in a single compound. The central hall enshrines the god of the Southern Mountain, the fire god Zhurong, titled the Sitian Zhaosheng Emperor, and its seventy-two stone columns stand for Hengshan's seventy-two peaks. Rebuilt in the 1880s on the model of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the temple has been repaired steadily since the 1980s after damage during the Cultural Revolution. Worshippers come from Hunan, Guangdong and much further afield, including Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia and Japan.
Nanyue Temple is one of the largest temple complexes in southern China, built for the god of the Southern Mountain. The god is the fire god Zhurong, Daoist and Buddhist halls flank its long axis, and worshippers still come from far beyond Hunan.