The point of a visit to Mt. Wutai is the temples. There are seventy-six of them — the highest concentration on any of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains — packed into a high valley and scattered up the surrounding peaks. Most visitors stay two or three days in the monastic village of Taihuai, walk between the central cluster of monasteries during the day, and climb to one or more of the five terraces for the views and the small summit shrines.
The two unmissable buildings in the central area are the Xiantong Temple, the oldest and largest of the working monasteries, and the Great White Pagoda, the brick stupa that has stood as the visual emblem of Wutaishan since the Yuan dynasty. Twenty kilometres south, in a different valley altogether, sits Foguang Temple — an 857 CE wooden hall that is one of the two oldest surviving timber buildings in China and the single most important piece of Tang architecture anywhere in the country.
Allow time for the climb to Dailuoding, a small temple on a ridge above Taihuai reached by a long flight of stone steps (or a cable car) and from which the whole monastic valley unfolds beneath you. And keep an eye on the weather — the mountain is genuinely high (the northern terrace is 3,058 metres) and can hold snow into late spring.