I find traditional Chinese roofs fascinating. The Forbidden City is a great place for roof watchers. The picture below isn’t square, but it contains information about the guardians.
Forbidden City Roof lines
Tag Archives: roofs
Civilization: Roof lines, lines of roofs and power lines
Roof Squares
If it wasn’t for the last minute…Instead of 30 posts, 30 photos in one gallery, but they are all square.
London.
London
Roman roof gable decoration, Bath.
Roof dormers and chimney pots, Bath.
Decoration and a few weeds, Bath
Roof supports from below, Bath Abbey
Roof tops in Carlisle.
Chimney pots in Carlisle.
Carlisle train station roof.
Church poking up over and ocean of roof tops in Barrow-in-Furness.
Parish church in Bowness-on-Solway.
Fortress-like church to keep reivers out in Brough-by-Sands.
Truss roof supports at St. Mary’s church in Beaumont.
Roof over entry to St. Mary’s in Beaumont.
Roof of St. John the Evangelist church in Crosby-on-Eden.
Roof is missing from Thirwall Castle.
Welcoming roof of Robin Hood Inn.
Rows of matching roof tops in Newburn.
Not sure what this is, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Dome in Whitley Bay.
Cathedral in Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Medieval roofs in York.
Deanery in York.
Roofs of York
Chimney pots and antenna on York roofs.
Castle’s eye view of York.
York chimney pots.
Yet more York roofs.
Temperate house in Kew Gardens, London-ish.
Chimneys on Kew Palace.
Since so many of the blogs I follow have been posting to the Roof Squares Challenge I found myself taking more pictures of roofs while we were on vacation than I would have otherwise. I began to have a chimney pot obsession toward the end.
China A to Z: R is for Rooftops and their guardians
Looking down on rooftops is something that often gives me a sense of where I am. Here are views from the highest point in Beijing:
The classic tiled curved roof lines show up somewhere in almost every rooftop picture I take in China. The Forbidden City probably has the highest density of them, but they are pretty common in other places as well. They are reserved for (or, perhaps, best preserved as) the roofs of temples and the homes of the wealthy. However, more modern buildings, such as hotels, will also have them to attract attention.
The shape, in older, traditional buildings, comes from the dougong construction method:
Rooftop Guradians
On the older tile roofs there will often be figures that are called “guardians”.
The more guardians the more important the building. The most important building in China, the Hall of Supreme Harmony has eleven.
All other buildings have ten or fewer.
