The tallest recorded building in ancient China is the tower of Yongning Temple in Luoyang.

Yongning Temple Pagoda is a stupa in Yongning Temple, a royal temple in Luoyang City in the Northern Wei Dynasty. According to Yang Xuanzhi's "Luoyang Galand", the tower of Yongning Temple is a wooden structure, nine stories high and hundreds of feet high, which can be seen hundreds of miles away.

Yongning Temple Tower was built in the first year of Xiping, Emperor Xiaoming (AD 5 16). It is presided over by Hu, the spiritual queen mother who believes in Buddhism. The scale of Yongning Temple Tower is the highest among thousands of temples in Luoyang. It is a Buddhist temple with pagoda as the center, and it is a place to worship the emperor and the empress dowager.

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Yongning Temple Tower is the commanding height of Luoyang. Under the gaze of this tower, Luoyang at that time was like Brahma Buddha. After Emperor Xiaowen moved to Luoyang, Buddhist temples were built on a large scale, which led to a sharp increase in the number of Buddhist temples in Luoyang. At that time, the glory of Luoyang City was unparalleled. In the third year of Yongxi (AD 534), the tower of Yongning Temple was destroyed by fire.

The existing site of Yongning Temple Tower is located in the old city of Luoyang in Han, Wei and Han Dynasties. Up to now, there are still the remains of the tower foundation, which is a tall earthen platform, commonly known locally as Mouning Temple or Muta Temple. In the Qing dynasty, it was mistakenly classified as a mausoleum, and the monument of "the quiet mausoleum of the Chinese emperor" still exists. The Institute of Archaeology of China Academy of Sciences conducted a survey on this site on 1979 ~ 198655.

Yongning Temple Tower has been excavated by archaeology. Its foundation is made of rammed earth, about 100 meters square. It has a platform covered with bluestone, with an average length and width of 38.2 meters and a height of 2.2 meters. There are original stone railings around. There are ramps in the middle of each side, and the four corners of the tower are thickened into piers, which makes the tower look very stable. The tower was built in the center of Yongning Temple, surrounded by the main hall of Langmen, which was an early central tower Buddhist temple.

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