Structure of Potala Palace

The Potala Palace is 3,756.5 meters above sea level, covering an area of over 360,000 square meters (about 32 acres), measuring 360 meters from east to west and 270 meters from south to north. It has 13 stories, and is 117 meters high. The walls of the Palace are over one meter in thickness, the thickest sections being five meters. They are painted with huge colorful murals, which make it beautiful and lively.

The magnificent Potala Palace is made of wood and stone. All the walls are of granite, and all the roofs and windows are of wood. The overhanging eaves, the upturned roof corners, and the gilded brass tiles and gilded pillars inscribed with Buddhist scriptures, bottles, and makara fish as well as the gold-winged birds decorating the roof ridges contribute much to the beauty of the hip-and-gable roofs.

The stone-and-wood-structured Potala Palace consists of over 1000 rooms, seminary, chanting hal1, temples, various chambers for worshipping Buddha and chambers housing the stupas of several Dalai Lamas, which are covered with gold 1eaf and studded with jewels. In the rooms, there are tens of thousands of Buddha figures. Different in sizes and complex in designs, the figures look vivid and lovely.