Yonghegong began its life as a residence rather than a religious building, constructed in 1694 to house Prince Yong, a son of the Kangxi Emperor. When that prince ascended the throne in 1722 as the Yongzheng Emperor, Qing custom held that a former princely residence could not simply continue as an ordinary building once its occupant had become emperor, and half the complex was converted into a lamasery, a Tibetan Buddhist institution, while the other half retained an imperial function.
The fuller transformation came under Yongzheng's son, the Qianlong Emperor, who in 1744 completed the conversion of the entire complex into a working Gelug monastery, staffed with monks drawn from Mongolia and Tibet rather than China's own Buddhist establishment. The choice reflected the Qing court's broader religious and political engagement with Tibetan Buddhism, patronized deliberately as part of the Manchu relationship with Mongol and Tibetan populations.
The monastery's best known feature is a matter of raw scale. Its Wanfu Pavilion houses a standing statue of Maitreya, the future Buddha, carved from a single trunk of white sandalwood and rising some eighteen meters, a scale of single piece wood carving with few equals anywhere. Surrounding halls hold statuary and ritual objects reflecting Gelug practice, distinct from the Chinese Buddhist and Daoist temples elsewhere in the city.
Yonghegong survived the twentieth century's disruptions better than many Chinese religious sites, reportedly protected during the Cultural Revolution by direct intervention from Premier Zhou Enlai, and reopened to public worship in 1981. It functions today as both an active monastery, with resident monks maintaining daily practice, and one of Beijing's most visited religious sites.