Shwedagon Pagoda

Shwedagon Pagoda is the gilded stupa on Singuttara Hill at Dagon, later known as Yangon, in Lower Burma, and the country's most sacred Buddhist site. Tradition holds that two merchant brothers received eight hairs from the Buddha and that the local king enshrined them with relics of the three earlier Buddhas; archaeology instead points to a Mon foundation between the sixth and tenth centuries.

The pagoda enters the royal chronicles in 1362, when King Binnya U of Hanthawaddy rebuilt it to a height of eighteen meters. Queen Shin Saw Pu raised it to forty meters in the fifteenth century and covered it in gold.

By the early sixteenth century it was Burma's most celebrated pilgrimage destination. Earthquakes repeatedly damaged it, and the quake of 1768 threw down its spire; King Hsinbyushin rebuilt the top in 1775.