Potala Palace

• 1. Introduction

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  Potala Palace rises 300 metres above the floor of the Lhasa Valley, a fortress of red and white stone that has watched over Tibet for more than three centuries. Its sloping walls average 3 metres thick at their narrowest point, thickening to 5 metres at the base, with copper poured directly into the foundations to guard against earthquakes. Thirteen stories tall, it holds more than 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, and roughly 200,000 statues. No building in the world quite resembles it.

  But Potala Palace is more than a feat of construction. It is a place where political power, Buddhist devotion, and centuries of Tibetan history have accumulated in layer after layer. It was once the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas, the seat of a government, and a living repository of scriptures and sacred objects. Then, in 1959, all of that changed. How a single mountain became the site of one of the world's most extraordinary structures, and what happened to that structure when political storms arrived, is the story this documentary tells.

• 2. The Mountain and Its Myth

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  Marpo Ri, which translates as Red Mountain, stands in the centre of the Lhasa Valley at an altitude of roughly 3,700 metres above sea level. The mountain was not an empty canvas when construction began in 1645. A chapel called the Phakpa Lhakhang and a meditation cave known as the Chogyel Drupuk already occupied its slopes, both believed to preserve remnants of a far earlier palace attributed to Songtsen Gampo, traditionally dated to 637.

  The palace takes its name not from this mountain, however, but from a hill on Cape Comorin at the southern tip of India. That rocky point was regarded as sacred to Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, known in Tibetan as Chenrezi. In Buddhist tradition, Mount Potalaka is the mythical home of Avalokitesvara, and the Dalai Lamas were understood to be that bodhisattva's earthly embodiment. Naming the palace after that sacred abode was a statement of identity as much as a label.

  The site itself was chosen for practical as well as symbolic reasons. Konchog Chophel, the Thirty-fifth Ganden Tripa of the Gelug school, pointed out to the Fifth Dalai Lama that Red Mountain was positioned between Drepung and Sera monasteries and the old city of Lhasa. As a seat of government it would command the landscape without being detached from the religious institutions that surrounded it.

• 3. Power, Patronage, and the Fifth Dalai Lama

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  On the fifth day of the fourth month of the Water-Horse year in the eleventh cycle, Ngawang Lozang Gyatso was placed on what the records describe as the golden fearless snow lion throne and made sovereign of Tibet. That moment, in 1642, was the result of a military campaign by Gushri Khan, who had defeated the Sde-srid Tsang-pa regime and then offered, as the historical account puts it, the thirteen parts of Tibet to the Dalai Lama as a whole.

  The arrangement that followed involved three figures: the Fifth Dalai Lama himself, the regent of Ganden Podrang, and Gushri Khan. Sometime during or shortly after 1644, all three decided to build a palace. The Fifth Dalai Lama's previous residence had been at Ganden Podrang, an estate within Drepung Monastery. The new palace would be something else entirely.

  Construction of the external structure was completed in just three years. The interior work, along with all its furnishings, took 45 years. The Fifth Dalai Lama and his government moved into the White Palace, the Potrang Karpo, in 1649. He died in 1682, but work continued without him. The Red Palace, the Potrang Marpo, was added between 1690 and 1694, completing the complex twelve years after his death. A Kalachakra Mandala was constructed during the 1690s, and the Yamantaka Mandala followed in 1751.

• 4. Stone, Copper, and Color

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  At its widest points the Potala measures 400 metres east to west and 350 metres north to south. The walls slope inward as they rise, a structural technique that gives the building its distinctive silhouette against the mountain. Straight rows of windows are cut into the upper sections of those walls, and the roofline breaks into flat terraces at different levels before reaching gilt canopies resembling those found at Jokhang Temple Monastery.

  The colours that define the palace's appearance, the crimson red and the white and the yellow, come from the application of limestone. The White Palace forms the outer structure; the Red Palace is the crimson central section that houses the principal halls, the chapels, and the shrines of past Dalai Lamas. At the south base of the rock, walls and gates enclose a large open space, with great porticos on the inner side. A series of staircases climbs through intervals to the summit.

  The copper poured into the foundations was not a decorative choice. Tibet sits in a seismically active zone, and the builders accounted for that reality by locking the base of the structure in a material that could absorb movement. That engineering detail, combined with the sheer thickness of the stone walls, helps explain why the palace still stands after more than three centuries.

• 5. 1959 and Its Aftermath

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  During the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, Chinese shells were fired directly into the palace's windows. The structure survived, but the world the palace had been built to serve did not. Following Tibet's annexation by the People's Republic of China, the Potala became chiefly a museum.

  Seven years later, the Cultural Revolution posed a different kind of threat. According to Tibetan historian Tsering Woeser, the palace, which held over 100,000 volumes of scriptures and historical documents along with store rooms of precious objects, handicrafts, paintings, wall hangings, statues, and ancient armour, was, in her words, almost robbed empty. What saved the physical structure was a personal intervention by Zhou Enlai, who was then Premier of the People's Republic of China. His intercession in 1966 prevented the palace from being demolished or further ransacked.

  Among at least one group of Tibetans around 1950, the palace had been known colloquially as Peak Potala, or most commonly simply as the Peak. That informal name captures something the official history sometimes misses: for many Tibetans, the building was not an abstraction but a daily presence, a landmark so familiar it needed no formal title.

• 6. Heritage, Restoration, and the Visitor Question

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  UNESCO added the Potala Palace to its World Heritage List in 1994. Inscription brought recognition, but it also brought scrutiny. UNESCO expressed concern about modern structures being built immediately around the palace, arguing they threatened its atmosphere. The Chinese government responded by banning any construction taller than 21 metres in the surrounding area.

  Restoration work between 1989 and 1994 cost RMB55 million, equivalent to US$6.875 million. A second, larger restoration began in 2002 at a cost of RMB180 million, or US$22.5 million. The palace's director, Qiangba Gesang, clarified in response to concerns about materials that only traditional craftsmanship and traditional materials were used throughout.

  Visitor numbers became a separate challenge. Before any limits were imposed, the palace was receiving an average of 1,500 visitors a day, with peaks above 5,000. From the 1st of May 2003, the daily quota was set at 1,600 and opening hours were reduced to six hours to ease crowding. After restoration was completed in 2006, visits to the roof were banned entirely to prevent further structural damage.

  On the 1st of July 2006, the Qingzang railway opened into Lhasa, bringing a 30% increase in visitorship. The daily quota was raised to 2,300 to accommodate the new volume, but that figure is often reached by mid-morning. During the peak months of July through September, over 6,000 visitors have descended on the site in a single day, and opening hours are extended to manage the pressure.