Temple Translation

[PepDewg]

Hello my Chinese learning friends,

Recently my house mates and I acquired an architecture model of what we assume is a chinese temple. On the front of the temple is a sign with three characters on it - we assume it's Chinese but we're really not sure. Anyway, the temple is not adorning our dining room table and helping us study with its peaceful influence, but we were wondering if we could get a translation of what it says so we can refer to it correctly.

Here are the characters.

Cheers,

PepDewg

[isela]

The characters are "祈(pray) 年(year) 殿(tenement)" (temple for praying for good years).

This is from the "Heaven Temple" (天坛) in Beijing, the place where emperors prayed for smooth years.　

You can read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven

[PepDewg]

Thanks, that's so awesome. After looking at the page on wikipedia, it's easy to see where our temple got its inspiration.

Thanks again.