Purple Mountain packs an extraordinary density of sites: 中山陵 (Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum), 明孝陵 (Ming Xiaoling — Zhu Yuanzhang's tomb, a UNESCO site), 灵谷寺, and 紫金山天文台 (Purple Mountain Observatory, founded 1934 as China's first modern observatory).
history
The name comes from a purple haze said to hover around the peaks at dawn and dusk. The mountain has long had imperial associations — the phrase 虎踞龙蟠 ("crouching tiger, coiled dragon") used to describe Nanjing's geography specifically invokes Purple Mountain as the coiled dragon.
