Long Gallery

 

Located on the north bank of Kunming Lake and the south foot of Longevity Hill, Long Gallery stretches 728 meters from the moon gate in the east to the Shizhang Pavilion in the west. It is the longest and most famous gallery in China.

 

First built in 1750 with 273 rooms, the gallery was fully painted and decorated with colorful designs and pictures, winding its way along the lake like a colorful ribbon. Four octagonal pavilions with double roofs were built at regular intervals to represent the four seasons.

 

The gallery has about 8000 colorful paintings, which, as the most charming part of the gallery, depict landscapes, human figures, battle scenes, flowers, birds, etc.

 

The landscape, flower-and-bird paintings mainly center on the scenery in the West Lake while the figure paintings mostly derived their themes from the legend and classic novels like "Strange Tales of Liaozhai", "Pilgrimage to the West", "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Water Margin" and so on.

 

Beautiful as these paintings are, they have to be retouched every 12 years. Till today these painting have been renewed several times, and due to the imperfect skills of some artisans, unfortunately, much of the details and intricacies have more or less been lost.