Twin Pagodas, Suzhou

The Twin Pagodas of Suzhou stand as the most prominent survivors of the former Dinghui Temple, once an influential Buddhist complex with a history stretching back more than a thousand years. Constructed in 982 AD during the Northern Song period, the pagodas were funded by Wang Wenhan and his brother and originally formed part of a temple known by several names over the centuries, including Banruo, Luohan, the West Temple, and finally Dinghui. Although the temple was repeatedly rebuilt after fires—most notably in the late Yuan dynasty and again after its destruction during the Second Opium War in 1860—it never regained its former scale. Today, scattered columns, plinths, and decapitated statues from the Tang era offer a quiet reminder of the site’s long and layered past.

What makes the Twin Pagodas exceptional is their rarity in Chinese temple architecture, where a single pagoda was the norm. Built of brick and rising to about 30 metres, the Reliquary Pagoda and the Beneficial Virtue Reliquary Pagoda share nearly identical forms: octagonal, seven-storey structures with square rooms rotated 45 degrees at each level, except for the octagonal second floor. Their unusually long iron steeples add a distinctive silhouette seldom seen in ancient Chinese pagodas.

The site also carries a literary connection. Su Shi, one of the Song dynasty’s most celebrated writers, maintained a close friendship with Dinghui Temple’s abbot, Shou Qin. Their exchanged poems were once engraved on the temple walls, and a playful local saying likened the Twin Pagodas to a pair of scholars’ brushes beside a nearby “inkstone” tower—an enduring nod to Suzhou’s cultural imagination.