Medieval Chinese palace destroyed by fire

As I sometimes say, "See the world while it's still there":

A centuries-old mountaintop palace in central China caught fire and was ``burned into ashes,'' a government preservation agency said Tuesday, eight years after the area was added to a U.N. list of cultural heritage sites.

The Yuzhengong Palace on the lush hillside of Wudangshan Mountain in Hubei province, a typical example of imperial architecture during the late Yuan (1271-1368) and early Ming (1368-1644) dynasties, caught fire at 7 p.m. Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

By the time the fire was extinguished 2 hours later, the UNESCO World Heritage Site structure was burned to the ground and ``nearby cultural relics were damaged,'' Xinhua said.

Posted by David on January 21, 2003 10:21 AM