The Hangzhou Confucius Temple was the earliest Hangzhou Prefectural School (equivalent to the former Hangzhou University). It was renovated in the Northern Song Dynasty and has a history of at least 970 years. Since the Southern Song Dynasty until now, the Hangzhou Confucius Temple has gone through several generations for more than 800 years and occupies a very important position in the history of Hangzhou. The plane layout and architectural style of the Hangzhou Confucius Temple are composed of two areas, east and west, which are both interconnected and relatively independent according to the traditional pattern, cultural inheritance, cultural relic connotation and the characteristics of Jiangnan gardens. The west area is the central axis of the Confucius Temple, focusing on displaying the cultural essence of the Hangzhou Confucius Temple. The axis takes the Dacheng Hall as the core and adopts a balanced, symmetrical, regular and square plane layout. It is composed of buildings such as the Lingxing Gate, the Pan Pool, the Dacheng Gate, the east and west corridors, the stele pavilion, and the Dacheng Hall. This not only completely retains the original central axis style of the Confucius Temple, but also makes the entire building with different heights and a dynamic and orderly layout. The Dacheng Hall is the main hall of the Confucius Temple and is a well-preserved Qing-style double-eaved hip-roof wooden structure building in Hangzhou. There are a large number of late Qing Dynasty colored paintings remaining on the ceiling and beams of the hall. The colored paintings are bright in color, rich in levels, simple and elegant in color. The patterns include dragons, phoenixes, unicorns, cranes, peonies, pine trees, figures, etc. The shapes are beautiful and the images are vivid. It can be called extremely exquisite and is a rare ancient art treasure in Hangzhou. In addition, the Confucius Temple is also commonly known as the ‘Stele Forest’ by locals. Because in this Jiangnan garden, there are more than 420 steles. On the more than 300-meter-long stele corridor, there are various types of steles on calligraphy copies, paintings, Confucianism, religion, historical facts, etc. The time span from the Tang Dynasty to modern times is large and the knowledge is extensive, which is truly unique.
The opening hours are closed all day on Monday throughout the year; open from 09:00 to 16:30 from Tuesday to Sunday throughout the year.Hangzhou Confucius Temple
The Hangzhou Confucius Temple was the earliest Hangzhou Prefectural School (equivalent to the former[...]
