Shwedagon Pagoda

Shwedagon Pagoda stands on Singuttara Hill in Dagon Township, Yangon, and is regarded as the holiest Buddhist site in Myanmar. Tradition holds that it was founded more than 2,500 years ago to enshrine eight hairs of the Gautama Buddha along with relics of three earlier Buddhas, although the earliest archaeologically supported structure is generally dated to the Mon period between the 6th and 10th centuries CE. The stupa took its present form largely through the Mon queen Shinsawbu in the 15th century, who is credited with raising it to about 40 metres and with the custom of donating her weight in gold. Later rulers continued to add gold leaf, and the Konbaung king Hsinbyushin rebuilt the stupa to its current height of about 99 metres after an earthquake in 1768. Further earthquakes damaged the structure in 1888 and 1930, and each time the community rebuilt it. The central stupa is covered in gold plates and crowned by a jewelled vane, a diamond orb and a hti umbrella set with thousands of gems. Around the main stupa on a large terrace stand dozens of smaller shrines, pavilions, prayer halls and planetary posts, one for each day of the Burmese week, where devotees pour water over the Buddha image or animal of their birth day. Notable features include the Maha Gandha Bell, cast in 1779 and weighing about 23 tonnes, the Singu Min Bell, and the tazaung halls with gilded woodcarving and glass mosaic. Four covered stairways lead up from the cardinal directions, with the southern and western approaches the most commonly used by visitors. The complex is a living place of worship rather than a museum, so the curatorial approach is devotional and circumambulatory: visitors walk clockwise around the stupa, and the monument's layers of repair reflect continuous worship over centuries. The British occupied the platform as a military garrison from 1824 to 1852, and handed it back to the Buddhist community in 1929. Conservation work is ongoing, with periodic regilding and structural maintenance funded through donations. Visitors are expected to remove shoes and socks at the entrances and dress modestly, covering shoulders and knees.