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Punakha Dzong's long whitewashed walls and red roofs rising straight from the riverbank

Punakha

Punakha Dzong

December 2010

Punakha Dzong stands at the confluence of the Pho Chhu and Mo Chhu, commonly translated as the Father and Mother rivers. Also known as Pungthang Dewachen Phodrang, or the “Palace of Great Happiness or Bliss,” it was constructed in 1637–1638 under Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, the Buddhist leader who unified Bhutan. It is Bhutan’s second-oldest and second-largest dzong.

Bhutanese dzongs traditionally combined monastic, administrative, and defensive functions. Punakha Dzong served as Bhutan’s seat of government until the capital moved to Thimphu in 1955 and remains the administrative center of Punakha District. It also houses important relics of the Southern Drukpa Kagyu tradition and serves as the winter residence of the Je Khenpo, Bhutan’s chief abbot, and the Central Monastic Body.

Ugyen Wangchuck was crowned Bhutan’s first hereditary king at Punakha Dzong in 1907. Since 2012, the dzong has been included with four other Bhutanese dzongs on Bhutan’s UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List; it is not currently an inscribed World Heritage Site.

Whitewashed dzong with tiered red-and-gold roofs on a wooded slope above a dry, stony riverbed
Punakha Dzong's long whitewashed walls and red roofs rising straight from the riverbank
A monk and women in traditional Bhutanese dress crossing a covered wooden bridge
Monk carrying his folded outer robe past a brightly painted timber pillar in the courtyard
Carved lion heads with green manes and bared teeth jutting from a painted eave
Row of engraved metal prayer wheels set in orange arches painted with lotus flowers
Lone figure in red robes dwarfed by the dzong's sloping whitewashed rampart beside a lily pond
Through a whitewashed doorway, monks in red walking along a sunlit wooden bridge
Young monks in red robes sitting in a circle on the grass above a fast blue river
Monk stepping out of a painted gateway onto sunlit flagstones as others rest in the shade

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