The Maitreya Chapel in Tashilhunpo holds the largest gilded bronze statue in Tibet — a 26-metre seated image of the Future Buddha that occupies a purpose-built multi-storey hall at the western end of the complex. The statue was completed in 1914 and is so large that you need to visit each floor of the surrounding gallery to see it fully: from the ground floor, you look up at the feet and lap; the upper galleries bring you level with the hands and, finally, the golden face.
The figure is dressed in silk robes and crowned with a jewelled headdress, its expression benign and its scale genuinely overwhelming. Monks chant in the anteroom, and the smell of butter lamps and juniper smoke fills the space. The hall is one of the most impressive religious interiors in Tibet — not serene, exactly, but charged with accumulated devotion.
The Maitreya Chapel is usually included in the standard monastery tour route. Photography of the statue face is sometimes permitted from the upper galleries; check with your guide, as rules change.