Fig. 1: Overview of the Shunling imperial mausoleum with an over 1060-year history that has been open to the public for over 60 years.

The appearance of the Shunling Mausoleum (a). The green phototrophic microbiome is widespread on the tomb walls exposed to filament lamps with white light (400–700 nm) (b and c in the rear chambers of the Two Mausoleums of the Southern Tang Dynasty). A 2-year in situ experiment on three typical artificial light wavelengths (i.e., blue (~455 nm), green (~530 nm) and red (~640 nm) lights) is conducted to replace the white light lamps in the rear chambers in the Shunling Mausoleum (d, e). More detailed information is presented in Supplementary Fig. 1b.