The Giant Buddha Statue and the well of Hwangyong Temple

Walk down the path and you'll see two sites where a number of foundation stones lie.
The smaller one is where a pagoda stood and the larger one is where the main temple building was.

At the center of the building site there are three large stones. They mark the place where a 5-meter-high statue of Buddha stood.
The statue was one of the three most famous treasures of the Silla kingdom.

The giant Buddha statue is believed to have protected Silla from foreign invasion.

And there is a mysterious story about the statue. The story goes that a King of India had tried to build a Buddha statue but repeatedly failed.
So he gave up and put a huge amount of gold, bronze, iron along with models of a statue in a boat and shipped them away.
The boat arrived in Silla, and the king of Silla ordered carftsmen to build a statue with the materials.
Surprisingly, the statue was successfully built on the first try. That statue was kept in this temple.

And there was also a famous painting of a pine tree. A famous artist of Silla painted an old pine tree on a wall of this building.
The painting was so lifelike that birds saw it as a real tree and flew into it.

Also, this temple was home to another of the three treasures of Silla, the 9-story wooden pagoda.

Now, shall we go to the site of the pagoda?
It is to the south of this site.