Dinglin Temple Pagoda

Dinglin Temple Pagoda

Dinglin temple tower is located at the northwest foot of Fangshan Mountain in Jiangning District of Nanjing city. It is also called Fangshan inclined tower. Its body inclines 7.59 degrees to the north, which is more than the world-famous leaning tower of Pisa in Italy. It is still called "the world's first inclined tower".

Dinglin Temple Pagoda was built in 1173 A.D. in the ninth year of Qiandao in the Southern Song Dynasty. It is about 14.50 meters high and is a brick Pagoda with seven levels and eight sides of imitation wood structure. The inner part of the first and second floors is square, while the inner part of the third floor is cylindrical. A wooden frame is set on the fifth floor to support the brake rod. The bottom floor only opens to the south, with a stone xumizuo in the center and niches in the East, West and North. All other floors are open on all sides. The body of the tower is built with bricks to form the column brace and bucket arch of wood like structure.

Building specifications

In the 16th year of Yuanjia (439 A.D.) in the Southern Dynasty, a foreign eminent monk (Kashmiri) built the upper Dinglin temple in Zhongshan. Later, the upper Dinglin temple was destroyed by war. In 1173, another eminent monk came to the northwest foot of Fangshan Mountain in Jiangning District and built xiadinglin temple.

Built on quicksand and rocks, Dinglin pagoda has been a miracle for nearly a thousand years. During the Liang Dynasty, Dharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, came to China to meditate. The first Daochang was set up in xiadinglin temple. Buddhist circles have the reputation of "nandinglin, beishaolin". In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the incense of xiadinglin temple was very popular. With the continuous construction of temples, the scale became more and more grand.

Dinglin temple tower is in disrepair for a long time. Its waist eaves, top and Tasha have been destroyed. Its body inclines to the north by 7.59 degrees. The top of the tower has deviated from the center of the tower foundation by 1.6 meters. It is only one step away from the "death line" of 8 degrees. In 2003, the relevant departments carried out the rescue and "rectification" reinforcement of Dinglin Temple Pagoda. The pagoda was bound with steel plates, and the tower body was pulled with steel cables, so that the slope was pulled back from 7.5 degrees to 5.35 degrees. Even so, it surpasses the world-famous leaning tower of Pisa in Italy and is still called "the world's first leaning tower".

Tilt reason

Dinglin Temple Pagoda was built in Fangshan, which is an extinct volcano. When the pagoda was built in those years, the workers "lazy" did not lay the foundation, but built the pagoda directly on the unstable volcanic rock. The bedrock is high in the South and low in the North due to the perennial rain erosion, so the tower gradually inclines to the north. It is hard to imagine that this ancient pagoda of brick and imitation wood structure with extremely unstable foundation has been standing for thousands of years. When the tilt is the most serious, the tilt angle reaches 7 ° 59 ', which is only one step away from the "death line" of 8 degrees.

Correct the slope

In those years, the engineering maintenance personnel drilled several 10 meter deep manual hole digging piles around the pagoda, poured cement, and enlarged the tower foundation, so as to stabilize the inclined tower. After rectification, the inclination of Dinglin temple tower is still higher than that of Pisa Tower in Italy, which can be called the first tower in the world.

Built on quicksand and rocks, the leaning tower has been a miracle for nearly a thousand years. The engineers dug out soil in the South and grouted in the north of the tower. A total of 16 bored piles with a depth of more than 20 meters were driven around the tower foundation. Finally, the tower body was restored to the "safe inclination angle" of 5 ° 25 '. The famous Leaning Tower of Pisa also adopted a similar "rectification" method. This is only the first step of the rectification and reinforcement project, and then the overall repair will be carried out.

The basic principle of the overall renovation plan commissioned by experts from Southeast University is "repair the old as before", "the eaves, balustrades and other parts of the tower do not have to be deliberately restored, the key is to maintain the ancient style of the tower".

In September 2003, Dinglin Temple site with an area of 1100 square meters was found only 30 meters northwest of the tower. At the site, we can see that the Daxiong hall site of the Qing Dynasty is overlapped on the site of the Song Dynasty, which is nearly 1.5 meters wider than the depth of the Song Dynasty, while the modern site is mainly in the side hall on the west side, thus solving the mystery of the renovation age of Dinglin temple.

Address: Dinglin temple, Fangshan, Jiangning Science Park, Jiangning District, Nanjing

Longitude: 118.872761

Latitude: 31.904169

Ticket information: no ticket required. Tickets for Dinglin temple are included.

Chinese PinYin : Ding Lin Si Ta