Nanjing Confucius Temple (Fuzimiao)

The Confucius Temple has stood on the northern bank of the Qinhuai River since 1034 and for centuries served as Nanjing's main centre of learning; earlier still, under the Eastern Jin, the capital's school was kept on this spot. Next to it worked the Jiangnan Examination Hall, founded in the 12th century and the largest in the empire: by the end of the Qing era it counted more than twenty thousand cramped cells, in which candidates wrote their essays for several days at a stretch without going outside.

Part of these rows has been restored, and a museum of the examination system now works in the courtyard, with the Mingyuanlou watchtower rising above it, from which order at the trials was kept.

The complex burned and was destroyed more than once, the last time during the Japanese occupation, and the present pavilions with their curved eaves were restored in 1984. The southern side of the river is closed off by a screen wall about a hundred and ten metres long with a relief of two dragons playing with a pearl — the longest wall of its kind in China, put up back under the Ming.

In the evening the buildings and the wall are lit up, and pleasure boats shaped like old barges move along the water.

Address

小石坝街, Qinhuai District

On the map