The Guge Kingdom ruins, covering an area of about 180,000 square meters along the Xiangquan River in Zanda County, west Tibet’s Ngari, is one of the first batch of China’s key cultural sites under  state protection. The ruins include over 300 buildings and caves, three stupas, four temples, two main temple halls, and two underground tunnels, separated over an upper, middle, and lower level of palace, temple, and residential homes respectively. Outside on the periphery there is a city wall with watchtowers built on the four corners. There is no shortage of fine artifacts, such as the statues and frescoes inside the the red temple, white temple, and samsara temple.

Around the 10th century A.D., Chide Nyima Gun, great-grandson of Tsanpo Langdarma, the last emperor of the Tubo Kingdom, led his followers into exile in Ngari after the fall of the dynasty, establishing the Tubo Kingdom there. From the mid-10th century to early 17th century, the Guge Kingdom conquered the west of Tibet, promoting the spread of Buddhism, resisting foreign aggression, and playing an important role in Tibet’s history after the TuboKingdom. Seven hundred years have passed since the magnificent Guge civilization, but its disappearance has remained a mystery up tlll now. It is said that in 1630, the Guge Kingdom’s western neighbor the Ladakhi, who shared a common ancestry with the Guge, launched an invasion, thus the Guge Kingdom was wiped out.

The magnificent Guge Kingdom ruins are an ancient plateau city in a vast area, providing important material resources for researching Tibetan history and ancient architecture. Today, there are only about a dozen families who guard the empty city ruins of the Guge Kingdom, though they are not the descendants of the Guge people. As the small amount of published literature on the Guge is incomplete with some conflicting accounts, it can not only fail to uncover the mystery of the Guge Kingdom, but add to its mystique.
(Source: China Tibet News)