No building in Yangon may rise above 127 meters above sea level, a limit set in deference to the Shwedagon Pagoda. The solid brick stupa sits on Singuttara Hill, about 51 meters up, and rises another 112 meters, covered in gold plates attached with rivets and topped by an umbrella crown set with 5,448 diamonds, 2,317 rubies, and a single 76 carat diamond at the tip. Legend says the merchant brothers Tapussa and Bhallika received eight hairs from the Buddha and brought them to King Okkalapa, who enshrined them with relics of three earlier Buddhas, including a water filter. The royal chronicles first mention the pagoda in 1362 or 1363, when King Binnya U raised it to 18 meters, and later rulers encased each older stupa inside a larger one.

Queen Shin Sawbu raised it to 40 meters and began the gilding tradition, and after a 1768 earthquake toppled its upper half, King Hsinbyushin rebuilt it to 99 meters. Invaders targeted it: Portuguese adventurer Filipe de Brito tried to haul off the 300 ton Dhammazedi Bell in 1608 and sank it in the Bago River, and British troops garrisoned the pagoda in 1824 and again from 1852 for 77 years. Colonial soldiers wearing boots on the terraces sparked the shoe question, which fed Burmese nationalism, and the pagoda became the stage for Aung San in 1946, Aung San Suu Kyi in 1988, and the monk-led protests of September 2007.

• Burmese astrology’s eight-day week, with Wednesday split at 6 p.m. and the evening assigned to Rahu
• Eight planetary posts around the base, each with a guardian animal, where devotees pour water on their birth-day shrine
• British engineers tunneling into the stupa in 1824 to test it as a gunpowder magazine
• The 23 ton Singu Min Bell, dropped in the river by the British and floated back up by divers tying on bamboo poles
• Replicas including the Uppatasanti Pagoda in Naypyidaw, built 30 centimeters shorter out of respect, and a 2019 monastery in Chisago City, Minnesota