Yungang Grottoes

The Yungang Grottoes run east to west along the south slope of the Wuzhou Shan, at Yungang village in the Yungang District of Datong, about sixteen kilometres from the city. The cliff holds fifty-three major caves and some 51,000 niches with figures; the largest Buddha is seventeen metres high and the smallest two centimetres. Cutting began in the Northern Wei, when the court ruled from Pingcheng, and stopped in 525, when local uprisings ended the work. The site was listed in the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units in 1961 and inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2001; a regulation for its protection took effect on 1 August 2018.