Tianti Mountain Grottoes

The team conducted comprehensive surveying, cleaning, excavation, mapping, photography, copying, and recording of the grottoes from October 1959 to April 1960 and then detached, reinforced and transferred the murals and statues held in the grottoes to the Gansu Provincial Museum, where they have been kept to this day.

The team also cleared and unearthed five earlier grottoes damaged and buried during the 1927 earthquake and peeled off a group of grottoes from the Northern Liang, the Northern Wei, the Western Wei, the Northern Zhou, the Sui, the Tang, the Western Xia and the Yuan dynasties.

After the relocation, as the water line has stayed below the flood level, the grottoes remained unaffected both internally and externally. Some grottoes still house murals, statue bases, stone carvings, grotto niches and central pillar reliefs. The only submerged section is the part below the abdomen of the Buddha statue in Grotto No. 13 when the water reached the highest level. In 1992, a dam structure was added.

Tianti Mountain Grottoes were named as one of the fifth batch of key cultural relics units under national protection by the State Council in 2001.