Confucius Temple

The Confucius Temple in Beijing was built in 1306 under the Yuan dynasty and, after the ancestral temple in Qufu, is the second-largest of the more than 2,000 Confucius temples worldwide. It stands in the northern Dongcheng district, directly next to the Guozijian, the former imperial academy, and for 700 years formed the ideological center of the Confucian civil-service education. In its courtyard stand 198 stone stelae, into which the names of all 51,624 successful candidates of the imperial examinations from the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties are carved, one of the most impressive epigraphic collections in the world. Inside the Dacheng Hall, a memorial tablet to Confucius is flanked by tablets of his principal disciples. The temple is part of a combined museum with the Guozijian today, a quiet counterpoint to the busy Yonghegong Lama Temple next door.