Sakya Monastery
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Sakya Monastery is an important old Buddhist monastery of the Sakya school 128 kilometres west of Shigatse in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Founded in 1071, by the powerful noble family of the Tsang its strong abbots governed Tibet during the whole of the 13th century after the downfall of the kings. I
Its medieval Mongolian architecture is quite different from that of temples in Lhasa and Yarlong. Originally built as a cave into the mountainside, it was funded in 1268 by Kublai Khan to be developed into a new magnificent monastery across the river, a site which remained a secular and religious centre in Tibet for almost a century.