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 first built in 1035 in the Northern Song Dynasty. When Fan Zhongyan served as the prefect, he established it on the old site of the Southern Garden of the Qian family in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
It is described as ‘on the left is a grand hall, on the right is a public hall, with 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 for worshipping Confucius. This system was later emulated by various places. In 1089, Fan Zhongyan’s son, Fan Chunli, ‘expanded it by using the vacant land in the Southern Garden’. In 1130 in the fourth year of Jianyan in the Southern Song Dynasty, it was destroyed by war and ‘nothing was left’. In 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 Jiangs[...]
