China · 16th century
The Shigatse Dzong, also known as Samdruptse Dzong, is located in Shigatse, Tibet, China. It is spelt Rikaze Dzong (official spelling: Xigazê Dzong; other spellings: Shigatse Dzong, Shikatse Dzong, Zhigatsey Dzong, simplified Chinese: 日喀则宗; traditional Chinese: 日喀則宗; pinyin: Rìkāzé Zōng, Standard Tibetan: གཞིས་ཀ་རྩེ་རྫོང་).
Shigatse Dzong was originally built by Karma Phuntsok Namgyal (1611–1621), the second in the line of the Nyak family who ruled Tibet from 1565 to 1642, after which the capital was moved to Lhasa. Shigtse Dzong's historic importance was accentuated by the fact that the Mongol ruler Gusri Khan installed the Fifth Dalai Lama as the supreme ruler of Tibet, which then covered territory from Tachienlu in the east up to the Ladakh border in the west in the 17th century. In later years, the fort became the residence of the governor of Tsang. The modern city of Shigatse has developed around the base of the Dzong.
The Dzong was destroyed in 1961, after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, but was rebuilt in 2007 at the same location, though on a smaller scale.
The large Tashilhunpo Monastery, founded in 1447 by Gendun Drup, the First Dalai Lama, is close to the base of the fort in Shigatse.
Text adapted from “Shigatse Dzong” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Shigatse Dzong ranks #6,224 of 9,035 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #61 of the 103 mapped in China. Founded c. 1550, it is older than 36% of the atlas's dated landmarks, one of 886 atlas entries founded in the 16th century. See how China compares in the castle statistics.
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