Unlike the freestanding South Asian stupa, which is often the primary or sole monument at its site, an East Asian pagoda usually stands as one element within a larger temple compound alongside halls housing Buddha images, monastic residences and gates, so a visitor's devotional attention is divided across several buildings rather than concentrated on the pagoda alone. Relics, sutras or other consecrated objects are typically sealed into a chamber at the pagoda's base or beneath its foundation at the time of construction, a deposit that in several documented cases has been recovered archaeologically many centuries later, offering rare physical evidence of the ceremonies that accompanied a pagoda's dedication.
Older pagodas were sometimes built to be climbed, offering a raised vantage point over the surrounding landscape that some also used for secular purposes such as fire watching, but this practical, climbable use declined as decorative and structural considerations came to dominate later pagoda design, and many surviving pagodas today are viewed from the ground rather than ascended. As Buddhism's primary relic monument, the pagoda occupies within an East Asian temple roughly the devotional role a stupa holds in South and Southeast Asia, even though its architectural relationship to the rest of the compound, and its role as landmark rather than sole focus, sets it apart from its ancestor.