Where is Potala Palace?
Potala Palace is in Lhasa, Tibet, China, in Asia. The game uses the reference point shown below: 29.6579°, 91.1172°. A guess within 25 km earns the full distance score before any hint deduction.
The answer marker is Potala Palace on Red Mountain in Lhasa, Tibet. The associated Jokhang and Norbulingka sites have separate locations.
Map loading. Coordinates: 29.6579°, 91.1172°.
The story behind the landmark
The site's origins reach back to the seventh century, but the palace seen today largely developed through seventeenth-century rebuilding under the Fifth Dalai Lama and subsequent additions. The complex served as a winter residence and a centre of religious and administrative life in Tibet.
UNESCO distinguishes the White Palace, containing ceremonial and residential rooms, from the Red Palace, associated with religious spaces and burial stupas. The World Heritage ensemble also includes Jokhang and Norbulingka. Those are related places in Lhasa, but should not be substituted for the palace's own hillside location.
How to recognise it
- A vast terraced palace rising directly from a hill
- Broad white façades surrounding a taller red central section
- Dense rows of dark windows beneath gilded roof details
Look twice: a useful comparison
Other Tibetan monasteries share white walls, red sections and gilded roofs. Potala's scale and stepped position on Red Mountain are stronger clues than colour alone. It is in Lhasa, Tibet; the correct map region lies far west of Beijing and the coastal cities.
A detail worth remembering
Potala belongs to a World Heritage ensemble of three different places. The palace-fort, the Jokhang temple and the Norbulingka garden residence illustrate distinct forms of architecture, so one inscription does not mean that all three occupy the same site.
