Chinese grotto architecture

    Grottoes are a type of ancient Chinese architecture, which is a grottoes shaped building carved out of the steep cliff by architectural techniques. The construction of grottoes began in the Han Dynasty, and most of them used closed burial chambers as the basic purpose. With the introduction of Buddhism, grottoes as temples appeared. In India, many Buddhist temples take grottoes as places of practice. The construction of Chinese grotto temples was first in the Hexi Corridor, around the end of the 3rd century.

    There are two kinds of building structure of the grotto temple. One is that most of the rooms in the temple, such as Buddhist hall, lecture hall, monk room, storeroom, etc., are grotto rooms chiseled along the cliff. The second is the grottoes as the main symbol of the temple, grottoes also built before the hall, monk room and other ground buildings. Because of the same use function and common development background, the internal space and appearance of the grottoes were similar to those of various buildings in the Buddhist temples at that time.

    In the existing examples of grottoes in China, most of the forms of grottoes show the characteristics of the internal and external space of the building, such as square plane, more than one depth, different functions of the grottoes use different volume, the inner roof of the grottoes show the indoor characteristics of the building, such as arch, astringent roof, roof, etc. In the corresponding parts inside and outside the grottoes, the images and decoration methods of components such as column, bracket, rafter square and flat chess are presented by carving and painting.

    Some grottoes have clearly reflected the design principle of showing the interior space of the building by the interior of the grottoes room and processing the exterior of the grottoes room into the main facade style of the building. The architecture of the Northern Wei Dynasty remains very few, and the cave temple architecture is very precious to retain the outstanding creation of people in that period, reflecting the new changes and new characteristics of the development of architecture.