Ananda Pahto Temple was built between the years 1090 and 1105. It was built in the reign of King Kyanzittha. The style is a Mon (an indigenous people) architectural style during the transition from the early to the middle architectural styles of Bagan pagoda building. This temple is a perfectly symmetrical Greek cross structure, though you can only tell it’s a cross structure when viewing it from above. It’s really a large temple with the main central square area being 175 feet on each side. The central tower with its gilded top is 167 feet high. The temple is surrounded by an enclosed wall as this is also a monastery and the monastery section also has additional buildings. Each of the four sides of the temple has a large gold teak wood Buddha that stands over 31 feet high. Each of these four Buddha’s represents a previous Buddha that has reached nirvana.

1. The first photo was taken from the courtyard but within the outer wall. You can see the main temple with the central tower while the section on the left is one of the arms of the cross.

2. A common and frequent event in a temple is to purchase and place some gold leaf on a Buddha statue. You can see Pete putting some gold leaf on a Buddha in the second photo. It seemed odd to us to be in such a poor country and to see so many people purchasing and putting gold leaf on Buddha statues, but that’s their culture.

3. You are looking at the Kassapa Buddha in the third photo which is a previous Buddha that reached nirvana. The third photo was taken standing near the statue. The only people that were normally as near to the statue as we were to take this photo were the monks and the wealthy and powerful rulers of the society. The Buddha is looking rather serious if you look at the face and mouth. The wealthy people are supposed to be serious about their duties and to take care of the masses of people.

4. This is the same Buddha as in the prior photo, but this photo was taken from about thirty yards back from the prior photo. Back here is where the common people stood and as you can see, Buddha is smiling at these people.

5. I just put the last photo in to give you a sense of size of this temple from the inside. You can look a long ways down this hallway and there were lots of long hallways inside this temple.