Located at No. 45 Renmin Road. In 1957, it was listed as a cultural relic protection unit in Jiangsu Province. The Suzhou Confucian Temple is also known as the prefectural school. Initially called the state school, it was built in 1035 in the Northern Song Dynasty. When Fan Zhongyan served as the prefect, he established it on the old site of Nan Yuan of the Qian family in the Wuyue Kingdom of the Five Dynasties.
‘On the left is a grand hall, on the right is a public hall. There is a泮 pool in front and study rooms on the side.’ Fan Zhongyan reformed the old system and created a new pattern of ‘left temple and right school’ by integrating official schools and the temple hall for worshipping Confucius. This system was later imitated by various places. In 1089, Fan Zhongyan’s son, Fan Chunli, ‘expanded it with the vacant land in Nan Yuan’. In the fourth year of Jianyan in the Southern Song Dynasty (1130), it was destroyed by war and ‘completely vanished without a trace’. In the eleventh year of Shaoxing (1141), Liang Rujia, the prefect of Pingjiang, rebuilt it. From then on, until the third to seventh years of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1864-1868), Li Hongzhang and Ding Richang, successively governors of Jiangsu Province, renovated it. In more than 700 years, there were more than 30 renovations and expansions recorded in inscriptions and chronicles. In the Southern Song Dynasty, there were 230 rooms. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it covered an area of more than 150 mu, approximately 100,000 square meters. Opening hours: Closed all day on Monday throughout the year; Open from 09:00 to 16:00 from Tuesday to Sunday throughout the year.Suzhou Confucian Temple
Located at No. 45 Renmin Road. In 1957, it was listed as a cultural relic protection unit in Jiangsu[...]
