Serving as the westernmost fort of the early Tang Dynasty, Dunhuang was not only a key trading post situated on the “Silk Road” but also the military headquarters for the operations in the Western Regions. Foreign merchants and monks from the West as well as officials and soldiers from central China brought their own cultures to Dunhuang and made the trading center a cultural “melting pot”. The economic, military, political and cultural activities which took place at this cross-roads provided the basis for the flourishing of one of China's earliest Buddhist centers.

Most Buddhist monks came to China from India and Central Asia by way of the Silk Road. As the westernmost Chinese station on the route, Dunhuang became the ideal place for these foreign monks to learn the Chinese language and culture before entering central China. Foreign monks and their Chinese disciples formed the earliest Buddhist communities at Dunhuang in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. Many Buddhist sutras were translated at Dunhuang and then distributed into central China. Monk Zhu Fahu, a famous translator of Buddhist texts, organized his translation team at Dunhuang and became known as “The Bodhisattva of Dunhuang”. Enormous economic and human resources were used to produce Buddhist sutras and to build places of worship, including thousands of cave temples. By the 5th century, Dunhuang had become an important center of Buddhism on the Silk Road.

Although it was only a small oasis town located in the desert of northwestern China, Dunhuang became the site of the largest complex of ancient Chinese art. Particularly, the Mogao Caves, which are located in the Gobi-desert 25 kilometers away from the city, consist of 492 caves with 25,000 square meters wall paintings and more than 3,000 painted sculptures. These well preserved caves span a period of one thousand years, from the 4th to the 14th century, and visually represent with vivid detail the culture of medieval China. The discovery in 1900 of a secret library cave, which was sealed around the mid-11th century and remained untouched for nine hundred years, has further made Dunhuang an extremely important site for the studies of medieval Chinese civilization. In addition to the Mogao Caves, a few other sites of Buddhist caves are located in the Dunhuang region, including the Yulin Caves (42 caves), Eastern Thousand Buddhas Caves (23 caves), and Shuixiakou (8 caves) in Anxi county, the Western Thousand Buddhas Caves (22 caves) in Dunhuang, and the Five-temple Caves (6 caves) and One-temple Cave (2 caves) in Subei county.