The Potala Palace (Tibetan: པོ་ཏ་ལ, Chinese: 布达拉宫) is
in Lhasa in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It was the chief residence of
the Dalai Lama until he fled to India during the 1959 Tibetan uprising. The
Potala Palace is now a museum and UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is built at an
altitude of 3,700 m (12,100 ft), on the side of Marpo Ri ('Red Mountain').
The Potala Palace has vast inward-sloping walls broken only in the upper parts
by straight rows of many windows. It is not unlike a fortress in appearance. At
the south base of the rock is a large space enclosed by walls and gates, with
great porticos on the inner side. A series of tolerably easy staircases, broken
by intervals of gentle ascent, leads to the summit of the rock. The whole width
of this is occupied by the palace.
The building measures 400 metres east-west and 350 metres
north-south, with sloping stone walls averaging 3 m. thick, and 5 m. (more than
16 ft) thick at the base, and with copper poured into the foundations to help
proof it against earthquakes. Thirteen stories of buildings – containing over
1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and about 200,000 statues – soar 117 metres (384
ft), rising more than 300 m (about 1,000 ft) in total above the valley floor.
The palace was slightly damaged during the Tibetan
uprising against the Chinese in 1959, when Chinese shells were launched into
the palace's windows. It also escaped damage during the Cultural Revolution in
1966 through the personal intervention of Zhou Enlai, who was then the Premier
of the People's Republic of China. Still, almost all of the over 100,000
volumes of scriptures, historical documents and other works of art were either
removed, damaged or destroyed.
The Potala Palace was inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage
List in 1994. In 2000 and 2001, Jokhang Temple and Norbulingka were added to
the list as extensions to the sites. Rapid modernisation has been a concern for
UNESCO, however, which expressed concern over the building of modern structures
immediately around the palace which threaten the palace's unique atmosphere.
The Chinese government responded by enacting a rule barring the building of any
structure taller than 21 metres in the area.
The number of visitors to the palace was restricted to
1,600 a day, with opening hours reduced to six hours daily to avoid
over-crowding from 1 May 2003. The palace was receiving an average of 1,500 a
day prior to the introduction of the quota, sometimes peaking to over 5,000 in
one day. Visits to the structure's roof was banned after restoration works were
completed in 2006 to avoid further structural damage. Quotas were
raised to 2,300 daily to accommodate a 30% increase in visitors since the
opening of the Qingzang railway into Lhasa on 1 July 2006, but the quota is often
reached by mid-morning. Opening hours were extended during the peak period in
the months of July to September, where over 6,000 visitors would descend on the
site.
The first postcard was received on 18 June 2014 from Olivia Postcrossing. The second postcard came from Zhang Jian on 20 January 2015 Postcrossing.
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