One Pillar Pagoda

The One Pillar Pagoda is small but carries great weight in Vietnamese culture. It is a wooden shrine perched on a single stone column rising from a square lotus pond, designed to resemble a lotus flower emerging from the water, the Buddhist symbol of purity. It stands in Ba Dinh district near the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Imperial Citadel and, with the Huong (Perfume) Pagoda outside Hanoi, is regarded as one of the two best-known temples in the country.

The original was built in 1049 by Emperor Ly Thai Tong. According to the founding legend, the childless emperor dreamed that the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, seated on a lotus, handed him a son, and he raised the pagoda in a lotus pond on the advice of the monk Thien Tue. Under the Ly dynasty it hosted an annual royal ceremony for the Buddha's birthday. It was renovated many times, including between 1840 and 1850 and in 1922, and was destroyed by explosives in 1954 at the end of the French war. The present structure was rebuilt in 1955.

There is not a great deal to do here, and the pagoda is much smaller than many first-time visitors expect. The stone pillar is about 1.25 metres across and 4 metres high, and the shrine honours the Goddess of Mercy, who in the archives answered the emperor's prayer for a male heir. Take a few minutes to look at it from different sides of the pond. The pagoda is part of the Dien Huu complex, whose name means pagoda of extended blessings. Vietnam's official tourism site lists morning opening on Tuesday to Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, from 7.30am to 10.30am in summer and 8am to 11am in winter.

Most people visit as part of a morning around Ba Dinh, straight after the mausoleum. Ten to twenty minutes is enough. It is a working place of worship, so dress modestly and keep noise down.

From here, the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long is a short walk to the east, and the Temple of Literature is a few minutes south by taxi, so the pagoda fits easily into a day of sightseeing in the west of the centre.