Potala Palace

Cold, thin air fills your lungs before anything else. Up here, more than three thousand metres above the sea, every breath feels a little shallow. Look up, and a wall of white and deep red rises from the rock, tier upon tier, until it meets a sky so blue it seems painted on. Somewhere nearby a prayer wheel turns with a soft creak. Then another. This is the Potala Palace, and it does not sit on its hill so much as grow out of it.

The hill is called Marpo Ri, the Red Hill, and it rises from the floor of the Lhasa valley. Tradition says a palace stood here as early as the seventh century, built by Songtsen Gampo, the king who unified Tibet and brought Buddhism to its court. Very little of that early building survives. A few chambers deep inside are linked to his era by tradition. Most of what you see today is far younger... and far larger.

The great rebuilding began in 1645, under the Fifth Dalai Lama. Tibetans often call him simply the Great Fifth. He had brought much of Tibet under one government, and he wanted a seat of power to match. He chose this hill, above the city and close to its oldest temples. The palace would be both a fortress and a monastery. It would also be a home, an office, and in time a tomb.

Look at the two colours first. The broad white wings are known as the White Palace. This was the working world, with offices, a printing house, living quarters, and a seminary for monks. Rising from the centre is the Red Palace, the deep crimson block crowned with gold. That part is devoted to prayer and to the dead. Here is the first surprise for many visitors — the Great Fifth never saw the Red Palace finished.

He died in the early 1680s, while work was still going on. According to the well-known account, his regent, Desi Sangye Gyatso, kept the death a secret for years. Visitors were told the Dalai Lama was in long retreat and meditation. The deception allowed construction to continue without political upheaval. The Red Palace was completed in the 1690s. Whatever the full truth, the story tells you how much this building mattered to the stability of the state.

Now look at the walls themselves. They lean inward as they rise, wide at the base and narrower at the top. This sloping style is typical of Tibetan buildings, and it helps against earthquakes. The lower walls are very thick, built from stone and rammed earth. The windows are framed in black, a shape that makes each one look like an open eye. Above them hang thick curtains of yak-hair cloth, which shade the rooms and move slowly in the wind.

The white is not simple paint. Locals say the walls are coated with a mixture that includes lime, and that milk, sugar and honey are sometimes added. Each autumn, workers and volunteers climb the walls and pour this mixture down in long streaks. Treat the details as local tradition rather than a fixed recipe. Either way, the result is a surface that glows, and that looks freshly washed after the ritual.

The name itself points to a sacred mountain. Potala comes from Potalaka, the legendary home of Avalokiteshvara, the Buddhist figure of compassion. Tibetans call him Chenrezig. Each Dalai Lama is regarded as an emanation of this figure. So the palace on the hill was meant to be a mirror of that mountain, a place of compassion on earth. For pilgrims, climbing it is not sightseeing. It is a form of devotion.

Inside, the rooms are dim and close. Butter lamps burn in rows, and the air carries the heavy, sweetish smell of yak butter and incense. The wooden pillars are wrapped in painted cloth. The walls are covered in murals of saints, kings, demons, and scenes from the building of the palace itself. Floors are worn smooth by centuries of feet. Many pilgrims carry thermoses of melted butter, and spoon it into the lamps as they pass.

The deepest part of the Red Palace holds the funeral stupas of several Dalai Lamas. A stupa is a dome-shaped shrine that holds relics. Here, they hold the preserved remains of the leaders themselves. The tomb of the Great Fifth is the grandest, covered in gold and set with precious stones. It rises through more than one floor of the building. Standing beside it, you feel very small, and that is probably the point.

For three centuries, the Potala served as the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas. In summer they moved to the Norbulingka, a garden palace on the edge of the city. That pattern ended in 1959, when the Fourteenth Dalai Lama left Tibet for exile in India. The palace became a museum. In 1994 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list, later joined by the Jokhang Temple and the Norbulingka.

Here is the second surprise — you may already carry this building in your pocket. The Potala appears on the back of the Chinese fifty yuan banknote. Millions of people handle its image every day without knowing its story. Standing here, you can compare the tiny engraving with the real thing. The note shows a flat picture. The real palace changes with every hour, as the light moves across its white and red walls.

Watch the people at the foot of the hill. Many are walking the kora, a clockwise pilgrimage circuit around the palace. Some spin long lines of prayer wheels as they go. Some count prayers on beads, murmuring under their breath. A few may stretch flat on the ground in full prostrations, rise, step forward, and lie down again. For them, walking around the Potala is as important as entering it.

Before you move on, pause and look once more. Notice how the palace seems to follow the shape of the rock, as if the hill and the building were made together. Listen to the creak of prayer wheels, the footsteps on stone, the wind in the black curtains. Breathe slowly in this thin air. As you walk away, turn around now and then. The Potala looks different from every street, and it stays in view for a long time.