Sakya Monastery stands in the town of Sakya, in the Shigatse region of western Tibet, on the road between Lhasa and the Nepali border. It was founded in 1073 and became the seat of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism, which in the thirteenth century exercised political authority over much of the plateau under the patronage of the Mongol court.
The grey walls
What makes Sakya immediately recognisable is its colour. The walls are a dark blue-grey, a deliberate contrast with the white and yellow of most Tibetan monasteries, and the buildings are arranged like a fortress, with high sheer walls, few windows on the outer face and a defended gatehouse. The southern complex sits on the far bank of the river and the northern one on the hillside above the town, and together they read as a single walled settlement rather than a cluster of temple buildings.
The assembly hall and the library
The main assembly hall is unusually large and is supported by rows of massive painted columns - the thickest trunk of each tree was reserved for the hall, and the columns are hung with cloth banners and carved capitals. Behind the hall, a tall building holds the monastery's scriptural library, a collection of tens of thousands of texts stored in a wall of shelves from floor to ceiling. The volumes are wrapped in cloth and stacked in the traditional loose-leaf format, and the scale of the collection is the reason Sakya is treated as one of the great repositories of Tibetan literature.
Art and relics
The monastery also holds an important group of thangkas, bronzes, stupas and ritual objects, including reliquaries and images connected with the founding figures of the Sakya lineage. The murals in some of the chapels are old and fine, and the mandala paintings in the main hall are exceptional. Several of the smaller chapels are only opened on request, so it is worth asking at the entrance.
Visiting
Sakya is around five to six hours by road from Lhasa and about two hours from Shigatse, so it is normally visited as part of a longer western Tibet route, often on the way to the Everest region or to the border. There is an entrance fee. Because the monastery is a working institution, visitors should keep to the public areas, walk clockwise around the buildings and chapels, and avoid photographing people at prayer or any image the monks ask you not to photograph.
