栖霞山

Qixia Mountain, also known as Qixia or She Mountain, is a forested hill in the northeastern outskirts of Nanjing, centered on the historic Qixia Temple and celebrated above all for its autumn foliage, which draws large crowds of visitors each November when the maple slopes turn red and gold. The mountain's three peaks rise modestly above the surrounding countryside, and its significance is primarily cultural rather than altitudinal — it has been a center of Buddhist learning and a destination for poets and pilgrims for well over a millennium.

The Qixia Temple complex, set into the lower slopes, is among the oldest and most important Buddhist monasteries in the Nanjing region, with a history reaching back to the Southern Dynasties period of the Six Dynasties era. Within and around the temple compound sit several notable monuments: the brick Relic Pagoda, an elegant multi-story structure whose base is ringed with relief carvings; a cluster of small cave shrines containing Buddhist sculpture from the fifth and sixth centuries; and older stele and inscriptions that record the temple's long patronage. Beyond the religious architecture, the mountain offers short hiking trails to natural features such as the One-Line Sky rock cleft and the Sword-testing Rock, which give the upper slopes a more rugged, scenic character.

For foreign visitors, Qixia Mountain is the most rewarding nature-and-temple excursion within easy reach of central Nanjing. The autumn color season is the most famous time to come, and while the crowds during peak weeks are considerable, the combination of red maples, ancient temple architecture, and early Buddhist sculpture is genuinely distinctive. Outside of autumn, the mountain is quieter and offers a more peaceful alternative to the busier Purple Mountain sites closer to the city center. A visit typically fills a half-day and is easiest to reach by car, taxi, or ride-hailing service from central Nanjing. Visitors with an interest in Buddhist art in particular should make time for the cave reliefs, which represent some of the oldest surviving religious sculpture in the lower Yangtze region and are easy to overlook in the rush toward the autumn foliage viewpoints.