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Rang

Plain of brick temples

Bagan

More than two thousand red-brick temples and stupas are scattered over a dry plain beside the Irrawaddy.

Temples starting to glow orange and red and slowly cast their long shadows over the surrounding fields. Bagan plains at sunset, ancient temples of elegant and symmetrical design. Bagan is an ancient city and the first ki
Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why Bagan is brick red

Bagan was the capital of a kingdom that ruled much of what is now Myanmar from the 11th to the 13th century. Its kings and their subjects built thousands of Buddhist temples and stupas across a plain on a bend of the Irrawaddy. Over two thousand survive. Most are baked red brick, once coated in white stucco that has largely fallen away, so the plain is now a field of rust-red towers among dusty earth and thorn trees. A few, such as the Shwezigon, are gilded from base to tip. Inside many temples are faded wall paintings. At sunrise and sunset the brick glows orange. Bagan became a World Heritage Site in 2019.

Brick red#A6563AGilded stupa gold#D4AF37Dust ochre#C9A36BStucco white#EDE6D6Acacia green#6B7F4A

Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.

Colours tied to Bagan

GoldA strong yellow named for the precious metal and often linked with wealth and first place
About this page

Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Bagan" on Wikipedia. If you know Bagan and we have it wrong, tell us.

More colour cities

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Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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