Nanjing

Foding Palace in Nanjing, China

Beneath the domed summit of Niushoushan Cultural Park lies one of China’s most unexpected sacred spaces: an enormous multi-level Buddhist palace hidden completely underground. Built to echo the mountain’s Tang-dynasty religious heritage, the complex was designed to protect important relics—believed to include a fragment of the Buddha’s skull—once kept on this very peak. Descend through spiralin…