Dzong architecture

The architecture is massive in style with towering exterior walls surrounding a complex of courtyards, temples, administrative offices, and monks' accommodation.

Drukgyel Dzong at the head of the Paro valley guards the traditional Tibetan invasion path over the passes of the high Himalayas.

This siting proved inauspicious, however, when in 1994 a glacial lake 90 kilometers upstream burst through its ice dam to cause a massive flood on the Pho Chhu, damaging the dzong and taking 23 lives.

Under this obligation each family provides or hires a decreed number of workers to work for several months at a time (during quiet periods in the agricultural year) in the construction of the dzong.

This accommodation is arranged along the inside of the outer walls and often as a separate stone tower located centrally within the courtyard, housing the main temple, that can be used as an inner defensible citadel.

The main internal structures are again built with stone (or as in domestic architecture by rammed clay blocks), and whitewashed inside and out, with a broad red ochre band at the top on the outside.

The larger spaces such as the temple have massive internal timber columns and beams to create galleries around an open central full height area.

The courtyards, usually stone-flagged, are generally at a higher level than the outside and approached by massive staircases and narrow defensible entrances with large wooden doors.

The style was first introduced in America in 1917 by El Paso architect Charles Gibson using photographs from an article on Bhutan in the April 1914 issue of the National Geographic Magazine.