From afar, the Shwedagon looks as if it was one huge pagoda rising from the top of Singuttara Hill to tower above the rooftops of Yangon. But when you reach the terrace at the top of the covered stairways, you wil be stunned by the sight that greets you.

Somerset Maugham described it aptly thus: "At last we reached the great terrace. All about, shrines and pagodas were jumbled pell-mell with the confusion with which trees grow in the jungle. They had (seemingly) been built without design or symmetry, but in the darkness, their gold and marble faintly gleaming, they had a fantastic richness. And then, emerging from among them like a great ship surrounded by lighters, rose dim, severe and spendid, the Shwe Dagon.”