Site of the Great Bao’en Temple, Nanjing, Jiangsu 南京大报恩寺遗址
The Great Bao’en Temple lay outside the Zhonghua Gate of Nanjing. The Ming Yongle emperor had it built on the old site of the Changgan Temple, which dated back to the Southern Dynasties, and its glazed-tile pagoda was the most famous in the country. Eight-sided and nine storeys high, about eighty metres tall, it was faced in white porcelain tile, with lions, white elephants and other figures in five-colour glaze under the eaves and around the doors and windows. Europeans called it the “Porcelain Tower”. It was destroyed in the Taiping War; the site is now an archaeological park, where the Northern Song crypt of the Changgan Temple and its relics were found.
