Luoyang is a small city, 25 kilometers to the south of the Yellow River, and is well known in China as "The Capital of Nine Dynasties", having been capital from the Eastern Zhou (770 BC) to the later Tang Dynasty (923-936 AD).
For several centuries, Luoyang was the gravity center of China. In 68, White Horse Temple, the first Buddhist temple in China, was founded here. The temple still exists, albeit the architecture is of later origin, mainly from the 16th century.
In 493 the Northern Wei Dynasty moved its capital from Datong to Luoyang and started the construction of the artificial Longmen Caves. More than 30,000 Buddhist images from the time of this dynasty have been found in the caves.