Po Nagar Cham Towers

Location

The towers stand on a low hill on the north bank of the Cái river where it enters Nha Trang Bay, opposite the old fishing quarter of Xóm Bóng, about 2 km north of the centre of the city^[2]. Wikidata places the complex at 12.2653 N, 109.1956 E^[1]. The hill is named Cù Lao in the festival records of the Ministry of Culture, which locate it in Vĩnh Phước ward of the city of Nha Trang^[6].

On 16 June 2025 Resolution 1667/NQ-UBTVQH15 of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly merged the wards of Vĩnh Hòa, Vĩnh Hải, Vĩnh Phước and Vĩnh Thọ with two communes into a new ward named Bắc Nha Trang; the resolution took effect on the day it was adopted and the new ward government began work on 1 July 2025^[8]. The Vietnamese Wikipedia article on the towers already gives the address as Bắc Nha Trang ward^[2].

History and dating

The earliest sanctuary on the hill was of wood. In 774 raiders from the Southern Islands (Java) sacked it, and King Satyavarman rebuilt the temple in brick, completing the work in 784^[2]. A hexagonal stele set up by Satyavarman in 781 records the raid of 774 and the erection of the Sri Satya Mukhalinga in 784^[2]; the English Wikipedia article gives the same stele and dates the foundation to some time before 781^[3].

The dating of the surviving buildings is not settled and the sources differ. The provincial newspaper, reporting the 2025 designation, gives the north-east (main) tower as first built in the eighth century and rebuilt in the eleventh, the south tower as thirteenth century, and the south-east tower as about the eleventh to twelfth century^[4]. The Vietnamese Wikipedia article says the main tower may have been built by Harivarman I in about 813 to 817, while the archaeologist Trần Kỳ Phương dates the mandapa to before the inscription of 817 that mentions it, the small north-west tower to about the tenth century and the main tower to about the eleventh century^[2]. The Government's own report of the designation ceremony puts the complex as a whole at the eighth to thirteenth century^[5].

Later inscriptions on the site record a golden statue of the goddess in 918, a stone replacement in 965 after the gold one was carried off, and gifts of land, slaves and objects dated 1050, 1064, 1143, 1165, 1178 and 1256^[2]. The English Wikipedia article names the kings: Indravarman III for the gold statue of 918, the Khmer king Rajendravarman II for its theft in 950, and Jaya Indravarman I for the stone statue of 965^[3]. During the French period the École française d'Extrême-Orient rebuilt parts of the towers in brick, and the head of the main statue was removed by the French; the present head is of cement^[2].

Structure

The complex originally had six towers in two rows of three; four survive, the two at the western end having been destroyed^[2]. Below the towers stands the mandapa, a pillared hall on a brick platform about 1 m high, with two rows of five octagonal brick columns each more than 1 m in diameter and more than 3 m high, flanked by twelve smaller columns^[2].

The main tower rises in four storeys, each with doors, stone deities and animal figures, and with four small towers at the corners^[2]. Inside, the goddess is carved in black stone seated on a lotus base with a stone back-slab shaped like a bodhi leaf; the Vietnamese Wikipedia article gives the statue as 2.6 m high^[2], while the English article gives a 1.2 m stone statue^[3]. The two accounts disagree and no measurement from an official source was found. Over the east door a lintel shows Durga dancing between two musicians^[2]. The tower of the rear row has a long saddle-shaped roof of a kind otherwise seen in the towers of Vijaya (Bình Định) after the eleventh century^[2].

Designations

The towers were ranked a national relic in 1979^[4][5]: the government portal gives the category as architectural and artistic^[5], the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism as historical and cultural^[9], and no fetched page carries the 1979 decision itself. On 17 January 2025 Deputy Prime Minister Lê Thành Long signed Decision 152/QĐ-TTg ranking five relics as special national relics, the towers among them^[4]. The certificate was presented at the site on 10 July 2025^[5]; the same ceremony handed over a certificate issued under Decision 1651/QĐ-BVHTTDL of 3 June 2025 of the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism for an intangible heritage listing^[5].

The Tháp Bà festival was listed among 16 national festivals by the Ministry of Culture and Information in 2001^[2] and was inscribed on the national list of intangible cultural heritage by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2012^[5][6].

The festival

The festival is held each year in the third lunar month. The Ministry of Culture's heritage record and the provincial newspaper give the 20th to 23rd day^[4][6]; the Vietnamese Wikipedia article gives the 21st to 23rd^[2]. The rites include the changing of the goddess's robes, the release of lanterns, offerings and a procession, with shadow dances and folk singing^[6].

In 2024 the festival ran from 28 April to 1 May, the 20th to 23rd day of the third lunar month; the organisers counted more than 100 delegations and more than 5,000 registered participants in Mother Goddess worship, and more than 100,000 pilgrims and visitors over the four days, about 50 per cent more than the year before^[7]. No published annual visitor figure for the site outside the festival was found.

Cultural significance

The temple was built for Yang Po Nagar, the mother goddess of the Cham of Kauthara, whom the Vietnamese settlers of the seventeenth century onwards worshipped as Thiên Y A Na^[2][6]. A stele behind the towers, composed by the Nguyễn official Phan Thanh Giản in 1856, records the Vietnamese version of her legend^[6]. The site remains a place of worship for both Cham and Vietnamese communities^[5].