11 of Vietnam’s most spectacular temples and shrines

Giant mountain-top Buddhas, vine-covered stupas in steaming rainforests, serene statues of Sea Goddesses swathed in mist… From Bodhisattvas to whale-worshippers, custard-coloured Cao Dai cathedrals to hallowed Confucian halls, Vietnam’s myriad religious buildings are testament to its rich spiritual history.

Several are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It’s no wonder: the country has civilisations going back millennia, sits at the cultural crossroads of India and China and is replete with Indigenous groups. They’ve lent their influences on the eleven shrines and temples we recommend visiting below.

Where: Hué

The Forbidden Purple City of the old Nguyen Dynasty Emperors may have been badly damaged by B-52s, but the countryside around is littered with fabulous pagodas and temple tombs in a complex preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These include the octagonal Thien Mu Pagoda, perched over the Perfume River, and the Huyen Tran Princess Temple, which is topped with swirling dragon gables, set in fragrant pine forest and built in homage to a Vietnamese princess who campaigned for peace. Most beautiful of all are the temple tombs of Tu Doc, the longest reigning of all the Nguyen emperors – a series of coral pink pagodas looking over little lakes and surrounded by bird-trilling gardens and woods.

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Where: My Son near Hoi An

Looking like Angkor Wat in miniature, this 1,500-year-old ruined city of vine-strangled stupas and crumbling terracotta carvings lies strewn in dense rainforest at the feet of rolling mountains. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and just a stone’s throw from tourist-tramped Hoi An, so it’s a miracle that most visitors have its serenity pretty much to themselves, the green magpies and the crimson sunbirds that flit and trill in the forest.

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Where: Hanoi

Don’t believe the name. This lovely complex of stately stelae (dedicated to the Confucian masters and select scholars), cloisters, scroll-filled libraries and terracotta roofed pagodas isn’t really a temple, and it’s got little to do with literature. This was the Imperial Academy – a university for aristocrats and mandarins, founded two centuries before Oxford and disbanded only when the Nguyen Emperors moved south to Hué in the 18th century. Today, its lush lakes and flower gardens are a haven from the heat and dust of Hanoi’s Old Quarter. Look out for shrines to Confucius himself, looking sage and portly and Chu Văn An – distinguished Chancellor of the University in the 13th century, physician and high-ranking mandarin of the Trần dynasty.

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Where: 70 km from Hanoi

This huge complex of Mahayana Buddhist temples, set along the shore of the Day River and clambering up the misty ‘Mountain of Subtle Fragrances’ to an ivory pagoda, is the country’s most visited pilgrimage site. The main pilgrimage season is between mid-January and March when thousands of Vietnamese pack into the cathedral like Huong Tich caves to pay obeisance to Amitabha, one of the great cosmic Buddhas of Mahayana tradition. There’s been a temple at Huong since mythological times – when the Shakyamuni Buddha himself is said to have visited the mountains. But the current buildings date back to the 17th century.

Where: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

This shrine-saturated, very Chinese temple which crowds into a complex in the heart of Saigon looks old but was commissioned in the early 20th century by a wealthy Hoa merchant (Cantonese-Vietnamese). It’s nominally Taoist – dedicated to a kind of Taoist Beowulf, who defeated a series of terrible monsters at the dawn of creation in China and then ascended into heaven. But there are sanctuaries to a whole host of other Buddhist and Confucian figures, as well as a to an obscure sea deity all but forgotten in China today. Be sure to visit the pavilion of the city god and rub his palm. A Chinese inscription on his hat reads ‘Look at Me Once to Receive Money’. Palm rubbing is apparently even more providential.

Where: Ho Chi Minh City

There can be no religious monument more poignant than this striking sacred statue set in a little park in central Saigon. It marks the spot where in 1963 Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, set himself on fire, holding prayer beads and chanting ‘Nam mô A Di Đà Phật’ (Homage to Amitābha Buddha). The photographs of the monk sitting silent and serene while being engulfed by fire shocked the world and won Malcolm Browne the World Press Photo of the Year. The self-immolation was a protest at the persecution of Buddhists by the Southern Vietnamese government. The statue of the monk, framed by flames as if sitting in the centre of a mandala is deeply moving and there are often pilgrims praying or leaving flowers at his feet. The car in which Quảng Đức traveled to his self-immolation is on display at the Thiên Mụ Pagoda in Hue.

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Where: Near Ninh Binh

This sanctuary of shrines, giant statues and incense-filled pavilions climbs a steep hill to a towering multi-storey pagoda and is easily visited as part of an excursion to the Trang An rivers and mountains. The views from the top of the main pagoda – over a sweep of terracotta temple roofs, pretty Hồ Đàm Thị lake and the rolling hills and karsts of Ninh Binh – are wonderful. Binh Dinh is often touted as the largest temple complex in Asia. It’s not even the largest in Vietnam – that’s Tam Chuc. But it’s nonetheless imposing, especially the huge 36 tonne bronze bell at the top of the main pagoda (more than twice the weight of Big Ben in London) and the 100 m long arhat prayer hall, filled with statues of Buddhist monks sat in the lotus position and gazing out from a state of enlightenment.

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Where: Binh Thuan, near Mui Né

Since the time of the Cham civilisation nearly 2,000 years ago, fisher folk along the south Vietnamese coast have revered whales as sacred creatures who protect them from storms. The Van Thuy Tu preserves the cult. Located on Ngu Ong (Whale Street) in Thuy Tu Village, a short taxi hop from the beach in Mui Né, the temple houses the bones of more than 500 whales, presented over the years by local fishermen and displayed in a series of wooden shrines, with one skeleton measuring over 20 metres long. It belonged to a whale who apparently gave his life to protect fishermen on a rough sea in 1762. The whale’s body washed up on the beaches near Mui Né, was salvaged and the temple was constructed around its skeleton to honour the sacrifice.

Where: Near Ho Chi Minh City

In 1921, Ngô Văn Chiêu, a district administrator working under the French, received a mystical vision from a Supreme Being who called disciples to unite humanity in a brotherhood devoted to remembering a common divine source and a single divine destiny. They called it the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, or Cao Dai, and drew on other faiths for the symbols and rituals of their new religion. Thus, the Supreme Being is represented by a cosmic eye – like that of the masons, ancestors are worshipped as they are in Confucianism, there are occult practices drawing on the mediumship of Frenchman Allan Kardec, Vietnamese tribal religions and Taoism. The head of Cao Dai is a pope with bishops and a Holy See – the Cao Dai cathedral. It’s an extraordinary place: a giant yellow church with pagoda-towers, Buddhist roofs, and an interior of swirling dragon pillars and painted cloud-filled skies. Adherents sit within in the lotus position on polished Faux-French tiles, dressed in all-white and venerating a gold, very-Confucian shrine topped by a giant eye set in jade.

Where: 60 km from Hanoi

What’s most impressive about this lakeside temple complex near Hanoi is the sheer size, with a main arhat hall as big as a cruise ship, stepped pagodas perched on hill tops and dozens of shrine-strewn islands, it covers almost 50 sq km. Even accounting for Hồ Tam Chúc lake – which falls within the temple boundaries – it’s one of the largest religious sites on the planet. Though the temple traces its history to the 10th Century Dinh Dynasty, what you see today is nearly all 21st century. You could spend an entire day here without seeing it all, but the spiritual heart of the complex is the three palaces pagoda, comprising Tam The, Phap Chu, and Quan Am buildings, each dedicated to a buddha or bodhisattva. Each is stunning – topped with swirling gables and with cavernous shrine halls. Phap Chu houses a colossal bronze Buddha weighing some 150 tons, which is the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia; though there are far bigger buddha statues in Myanmar and Thailand.

Where: Hanoi

The historic city centre area of Old Hanoi has some lovely ancient temples. Don’t miss the tiny 11th century One Pillar Pagoda, a much-renovated, tiny wooden shrine set on a single shaft of concrete in a lotus pond housing a sanctuary to Quan Am, the Vietnamese version of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion from the Mahayana Buddhist Lotus Sutra. And on your walk around the West Lake, stop off at Tran Quoc, whose elegant fifteen storey terracotta and pink pagoda sits over leafy gardens dotted with pavilions. The temple was founded in 544 CE, and though most of the buildings date from the 17th Century, the Bodhi tree was cut from the original in Bodh Gaya – where Shakyamuni Buddha sat and attained enlightenment.