Beita Park

Beita Park

The Lu'an Duobao'an Pagoda is one of the two-thousand-year-old pagodas renowned as the “Twin Pagodas against the Blue Sky,” and is a key cultural relic protected at the provincial level in Anhui Province. It is located within the Duobao'an Temple opposite Qinggong Middle School on Beishi Street in Lu'an City, and is commonly known as the North Gate Spire.

The *Lu'an Zhouzhi* (the Qing Dynasty Tongzhi edition) records: “Duobao'an Temple is situated to the east of the street outside the North Gate. Inside the temple there is a pagoda, said to have been supervised in its construction by Yu Chijingung, though bandits destroyed the top several feet of it. In earlier years, an ancient bell was unearthed; judging from the inscribed era name, it was identified as belonging to the Tang Dynasty’s Yaoshi Temple.” The pagoda has a hexagonal floor plan, a pavilion-style structure, and is a hollow brick tower. It currently has seven stories remaining, with a total height of 21.6 meters. The base is 4.4 meters wide on each side and 3.9 meters high; each successive level narrows slightly in both width and height, giving it a pyramidal shape. The seventh level (the current top) is 3.1 meters wide on each side. The main facade of the pagoda faces west. The base contains a pagoda chamber with a round arched doorway that is 3.3 meters high. The interior floor follows the angular turns of the walls, also forming a hexagon, with wooden-style bracket sets (dougong) above each side and corner supporting the overlapping dome ceiling. Originally, the chamber housed Buddhist shrines and statues, which were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The exterior of the pagoda features cantilevered brick balconies (flying eaves) at each level, supported by carved brick brackets. Between the inner core (pagoda pillar) and the outer wall, there is a 50 to 80-centimeter-wide brick stairway that spirals upward, allowing visitors to climb to the top of the pagoda.