Rising through the mist of the forest at dawn, with spires reaching more than 200ft, few sights on earth have impressed travellers like the temples and pagodas of Bagan. “Jerusalem, Rome, Kiev, Benares,” wrote the Scottish journalist and colonial administrator James George Scott in 1910, “none of them can boast the multitude of temples, and the lavishness of design and ornament”.
Lying close to the major Sagaing fault line in the centre of Myanmar, the 2,200 11th-century Buddhist monuments have long been susceptible to seismic events. “The last earthquake in 2016 caused considerable damage to key monuments,” said Dr Stephen Murphy, a senior lecturer in Asian art at Soas University of London. He added that it was unclear whether Friday’s earthquake had caused a similar scale of damage.
The stupas and temples were constructed on the banks of the Irrawaddy River by the first unified Burmese kingdom and one of the world’s greatest Buddhist civilisations.
Bagan’s founder, Anawrahta Minsaw, started out with a heroic single combat against his step-brother in about 1044, going on to conquer surrounding nations. One legend, recorded on inscriptions at Bagan, is that he brought back 30,000 prisoners skilled in carving, painting, masonry and many other useful skills, including “men cunning in perfumes, odours, flowers and the juices of flowers”.
The cultural effect was profound: more than 10,000 religious shrines were said to have been built, many decorated with intricate detail that has survived earthquakes and ill-judged restorations by the military junta in the 1990s.
Declared a Unesco world heritage site in 2019, the city has suffered under political turmoil and violence. Foreign tourism has plummeted in the last 20 years from about 200,000 to a few thousand visitors. “We took many visitors until 2017,” says Marc Leaderman at the travel company Wild Frontiers. “It’s a site comparable to Angkor Wat and we’re obviously deeply saddened for the people of Myanmar and Thailand.”
The site has remained hugely important to local people with more than 400,000 visiting in 2023. Ashley Thompson, a professor of south-east Asian art at Soas, said: “For populations subjected to sustained political violence over past decades, the glimmers Bagan provides of past prosperity can also sustain hope, even as its Buddhist imperial symbolism can be instrumentalised by those in the highest echelons of power.”
The site is also home to a museum housing the Myazedi inscription, a pillar dated to 1,113 sometimes called the Burmese Rosetta Stone. It carries four ancient languages, including the earliest known example of Burmese. “The potential cultural loss Bagan is again facing may pale with respect to the loss of life, but will have an enduring impact on a country where today so many people struggle to simply survive,” said Thompson.
