Temple of Confucius, Qufu

Three sites at Qufu are read together as one system: the temple where Confucius is sacrificed to, the mansion where his senior descendants lived, and the cemetery where the family is buried. Together they are called the Three Confucian sites, and since 1994 all three belong to the same World Heritage listing. The temple is the largest and most renowned of its kind in East Asia. It was founded in 478 BC, in the second year after Confucius' death, when his disciples raised a three-room hall over the house he had lived in and stored his robes, cap, zither, cart and books inside it. The Chinese record gives the complex today as about 327.5 mu, some 130,000 square metres, with 480 rooms; nine courtyards run from north to south for about 1,100 metres.