The Forest of Steles, lying inside the southern City Wall, is the place where there are the largest number of steles of different dynasties.
The Stele Forest began to be built in 1087 (the 2nd year of the North Song Zhezong Ere). It was maintained and expanded constantly during past dynasties of Jin, Yuan, Ming, Qing and the Minguo period, so the stored stones were increasing day after day.
In 1961, it was listed in the first batch of major national units of cultural relics that should be protected by the State Department.
It stores almost 3000 epitaphs and steles from the Han Dynasty till now, 1089 of them have been exhibited. People will gasp in admiration to the steles here which seems like a forest, for their gathering together all kinds of styles of characters written by famous specialists such as Zhuan (seal), Li, Kai (regular script), Xing and Cao.
The Stele Forest stores voluminous artworks which possess not only eximious value of handwriting and art, but also rich cultural connotation. So they're praised as 'the treasury of the oriental culture', 'the gathering of the art of handwriting', 'the palace of the fine carved stones of the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty', and 'the stack room of the most ancient carved stones in the world'.
