Qualla: Bagan https://qualla.com/bagan en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:36 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Bagan https://qualla.com/bagan Bagan: Introduction https://qualla.com/bagan/ From a hot air balloon at dawn, Bagan looks like a fever dream of devotion. Thousands of temple spires pierce the morning mist across an 8,000-hectare plain along the Irrawaddy River in central Myanmar. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, the rulers of the Pagan Kingdom built more than 10,000 Buddhist monuments here. Over 2,000 survive. No other place on Earth concentrates so much sacred architecture in so small a space, and UNESCO recognized as much when it inscribed Bagan as a World Heritage Site in 2019.

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]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/5/g/2/bagan-wp/w5g2-bagan-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bagan: A Kingdom Built in Brick https://qualla.com/bagan/ Bagan's construction boom was not gradual. It accelerated dramatically under King Anawrahta in the mid-eleventh century, after his conversion to Theravada Buddhism sparked a campaign to make the Pagan Kingdom a center of the faith. His successors continued the work with an intens...

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]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/5/g/2/bagan-wp/w5g2-bagan-a-kingdom-built-in-brick.mp3 0:06 2 full Bagan: Vaults Before Europe https://qualla.com/bagan/ Bagan's builders solved structural problems that their contemporaries elsewhere had not. The earliest vaulted temples in Bagan date to the eleventh century, while vaulting did not become widespread in India until the late twelfth century. The masonry displays what scholars have c...

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]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/5/g/2/bagan-wp/w5g2-bagan-vaults-before-europe.mp3 0:06 3 full Bagan: The Walled Heart and the River's Appetite https://qualla.com/bagan/ Old Bagan, the walled core of the ancient city, covers just 140 hectares along the riverbank, surrounded by three surviving walls. A fourth wall on the western side may have once existed before the Irrawaddy ate it. The river has not finished its work. Buildings continue to colla...

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]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/5/g/2/bagan-wp/w5g2-bagan-the-walled-heart-and-the-rivers-appetite.mp3 0:06 4 full Bagan: Earthquakes and Afterlives https://qualla.com/bagan/ Bagan has endured repeated seismic damage. The 1975 earthquake damaged hundreds of monuments, and another struck in August 2016, prompting an international response. The Zamani Project from the University of Cape Town documented twelve monuments using LiDAR technology between 201...

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]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/5/g/2/bagan-wp/w5g2-bagan-earthquakes-and-afterlives.mp3 0:06 5 full