Yungbulakang Palace is an ancient structure in the Yarlung Valley, Nêdong County in the vicinity of Tsedang. According to legend, it was the first building in Tibet and the palace of the first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsenpo.
According to the Bön religious tradition, Yumbulagang was erected in the second century BCE for the first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsenpo, who descended from the sky. During the reign of the 28th king, Lha Thothori Nyantsen, in the fifth century CE, a golden Stupa, a jewel and a Sutra that no one could read fell from the sky onto the roof of the Yumbulagang; a voice from the sky announced that in five generations one shall come that understands its meaning!
Later, Yumbulagang became the summer palace of the 33rd Tibetan king, Songtsen Gampo and his Chinese princess, Wencheng. After Songtsen Gampo had transferred the seat of his temporal and spiritual authority to Lhasa, Yumbulagang became a shrine and under the reign of the 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, a monastery of the Gelugpa school.
The Yumbulagang was heavily damaged and reduced to a single storey during the Cultural revolution but was reconstructed in 1983.
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