In AD 366, during the Eastern Jin Dynasty, a monk named Yue Seng chiseled the first cave here. The endeavor continued through later dynasties, including the Northern Wei (386-534), Western Wei (535-556), Northern Zhou (557-581), Sui (581-618), Tang (618-907), Five Dynasties (907-960), Song (960-1279), Western Xia (1038-1227) and Yuan (1279-1368), resulting in the fantastic group of caves that can been seen today.

The Mogao Grottoes in Duhuang is divided into north and south districts, totaling 735 grottoes in all. All the caves are linked by walkways and marked with the date of their carving and the dynasty. Today, 492 caves still stand, containing some 2,100 colored statues and 45,000 square meters of murals, over 4,000 flying apsarases, 5 wooden structures of the Tang and the Song Dynasties, and thousands of lotus-shaped pillars and floral paving tiles.. These murals, if joined together, would cover a length of 30 kilometers. The caves vary in size. The smallest one just allows a head‘s space, while the largest one stretches from the foot to the top of the mountain, having a height of over 40 meters. The colored statues also differ in size, ranging from a few centimeters to 33 meters high, embodying the remarkable imagination of their makers.

Despite years of erosion, the murals are still brightly colored, with clear lines. Through pictures of different styles and schools drawn in different historical periods, they tell Buddhist stories and ways as well as life in the secular world. All these, plus a largest quantity of Buddhist sutras and relics kept in the caves have provided valuable material for a study of ancient China‘s politics, economy, and culture and arts, as well as its science and technology, military affairs, and religion, documenting national history as well as cultural exchanges between China and the world.

In 1987, UNESCO placed the Mogao Grottoes under the protection of the world cultural heritage list.