Wuwei Confucian Temple(Chinese name: 武威文庙) is located southeast of downtown. It is a group of majestic style architecture built in the Ming Dynasty in 1439 AD. After expansion, the scale of the temple was larger. The temple faces south, originally constituted with east, middle and west architectures. The east architecture is Wenchang Palace, the middle is Confucian Temple, and the west was Liangzhou Mansion Confucianism. Now the Confucian Temple and Wenchang Palace are still well preserved with total area of 1,500 square meters.
The structure of the Wuwei Confucian Temple
The temple has the original main entrance facing south. Its southernmost is a solemn and firm screen wall. The screen wall has two smaller doors at both sides. The east one is called Yi Road, and the west one is Righteous Path. Passing the Yi Road to the temple, at the north direction of the screen wall is a half-moon shaped pool.
On the pool, there is a stone arch bridge, named Number One Scholar Bridge. Lingxin Gate is a wood bridge, with 4 columns and three rooms. Passing Lingxin Gate, you will see Ji Gate with county sage temple and official temple for worshipping social elites and honest and upright officials.
Ji Gate is a door to Dacheng Palace. The Dacheng Palace is built on the broad stone stylobate, magnificent and rigorous, with the architecture style of Ming and Yuan Dynasties. In the palace, there honors the portrayal of Confucius, the sacred teacher of Dacheng, with his best students Yanhui, Zisi, Zengzi and Mengzi’s memorial tablet at both sidles.
Passing the Zhunjing Pavilion after the Dacheng Palace, there is a 2 layers’ civil structure building on the 2-meter high brick stylobate. It is the highest and largest ancient building in Wuwei. The pavilion is surrounded by corridors and wooden fence. The triple rake angles are tied with aeolian bells.
At the east part of Dacheng Palace, there is Guiji Palace for worshipping Whenchang Emperor. The architectures were named Wenchang Palace.
Relics
On Sep. 1st, 1981, Wuwei Confucian Temple was checked and ratified to be one of the provincial level key cultural relic’s protection units. There was set Wuwei Museum, collecting 36000 all previous dynasties books, calligraphy and painting, stone and other cultural relics. Among them, the Han Dynasty wooden tablets, wood carvings, mummy, copper galloping horse, urtledove stick, Western Xia brand, Xia copper artillery are very famous ones. There are seven cultural relics on display showrooms, briefing reflecting the hisotrory from the Neolithic to Ming, Qing Dynasties in Wuwei.