Two Ming Pagodas Above the City
The twin towers of Yongzuo Temple were built for the city's fengshui and became its emblem; below them a gallery of collected steles and a brick hall without beams hold the site's other histories.
Twin Pagoda Temple
The Twin Pagoda Temple, formally Yongzuo Temple, stands in the south-east of Taiyuan, on the ridge behind Haozhuang village. Its two towers are the tallest set of twin pagodas in China, and the image of them has been the city emblem since 1985. They belong to a Ming building campaign: the East Pagoda was begun in 1597 for the fengshui of the city's literary fortunes, and the West Pagoda, the beamless hall and the present name came with the expansion ordered by the Prince of Jin in 1612. Below the towers a gallery of about 260 steles collects the inscriptions of temples that have disappeared.