There are around forty-eight Buddhist monuments in the Horyu-ji Area, in Nara Prefecture.
Several date from the late seventh or early eighth century, making them some of the oldest
surviving wooden buildings in the world.
These masterpieces of wooden architecture are important not only for the history of art, since they
illustrate the adaptation of Chinese Buddhist architecture and layout to Japanese culture,
but also for the history of religion, since their construction coincided with the introduction of
Buddhism to Japan from China by way of the Korean peninsula.
These temples, monasteries and associated buildings are the earliest Buddhist monuments in Japan,
dating from shortly after the religion’s introduction to the country in the mid-sixth century AD
and they had a profound influence on Japanese religious architecture.