Bagan

Between the 11th and 13th centuries CE, the kings of the Pagan Kingdom — the first kingdom to unify the territory that forms modern Myanmar — constructed an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas, and monasteries across a 104-square-kilometre plain on the banks of the Irrawaddy River. Construction on this scale was made possible by tax-exempt land grants to religious institutions, which over time concentrated enormous wealth and labour in temple-building — a pattern some historians argue ultimately weakened the royal treasury and contributed to the kingdom's decline after a series of Mongol invasions in the late 13th century.

Roughly 2,200 of these structures survive today, ranging from small brick stupas to massive temples such as the Ananda Temple, with its four 9.5-metre standing Buddha images, and the Dhammayangyi, the largest temple at Bagan, whose innermost passages were deliberately bricked up — according to local tradition, on the orders of the temple's builder, King Narathu, who was assassinated before its completion and whose motives for the sealed chambers remain unexplained. A major earthquake in 2016 damaged or destroyed parts of around 400 temples, prompting a restoration effort that UNESCO and conservation bodies have criticised for using modern materials inconsistent with the site's historic fabric — a controversy that contributed to delays in Bagan's UNESCO World Heritage listing, finally granted in 2019.