Tsechen Monastery and Dzong

Tsechen Monastery was a Tibetan monastery located approximately 5 kilometres northwest of Gyantse. It was one of the largest of the fortified monasteries constructed in Tibet, and was located above a village also known as Tsechen. Constructed "on another precipitous hill about 600 feet high, about one mile long, and rising abruptly out of the plain", the monastery was similar to the Gyantse Dzong in terms of the strength of its fortifications. During the 1904 British expedition to Tibet by Colonel Francis Younghusband, the monastery was occupied by Tibetan troops, which used it to resist the expedition's advance. Younghusband's forces captured the monastery and sacked and burnt it; some of the hilltop walls are all that remain of the structure.