Vat Phou — ruins
Basile Morin · CC BY-SA 4.0

Vat Phou

  • 2 min read
  • 14.849° N 105.816° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The temple's axis runs about 1.4 km from the natural stone lingam on the summit of Phou Kao, through the sanctuary and down towards the Mekong.
  • The protected sacred landscape covers some 400 square kilometres, planned and used for nearly a thousand years from the 5th to the 15th century.
  • An ancient road ran south from the site all the way to Angkor, passing quarries and the temple of Nang Sida.
  • The nearby city of Shrestapura is among the earliest known planned cities in Southeast Asia and is regarded as the cradle of the Chenla state.
  • The earliest inscription found here names King Devanika, who came from afar, founded a sacred bathing place and gave thousands of cattle to a temple.
  • In the late 6th century the city was the capital of King Mahendravarman, who later also ruled the Sambor Prei Kuk region some 240 km away in Cambodia.
  • Water from the sacred spring at the cliff foot was channelled into the sanctuary from very early times.
  • The causeway to the palaces is lined with stone boundary posts of the same type as those at Banteay Srei near Angkor.
  • Much of the climb to the main shrine follows stairways shaded by frangipani trees that are around a century old.
  • When European explorers arrived in the 19th century the ruins lay deep in forest; clearance began only in the 1950s.

Why it is worth it

Vat Phou is the oldest and most sacred of the great Khmer sanctuaries, and it is laid out like a lesson in how sacred geography works. The mountain behind it, Phou Kao, has a natural outcrop on its summit shaped like a lingam, and so was taken as the dwelling of Shiva, while the Mekong below stood for the ocean or the Ganges. Worship here goes back to prehistoric times, around a spring at the foot of the cliff and a spirit shrine; the first stone structures may be as early as the second century BCE, and in the fifth century the nearby city of Shrestapura, beside the river, was the capital of a kingdom linked with Chenla and Champa.

The buildings seen today date mostly from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the region lay within the Khmer empire. The complex rises along an east–west axis up the side of the mountain. It begins at two large artificial reservoirs, continues along a causeway lined with stone boundary markers to a pair of great quadrangles known as the north and south palaces, then passes the small hall of Nandin and climbs a series of stairways and terraces to the main sanctuary. Built in the mid-eleventh century in the Baphuon style, the sanctuary sits on a high terrace against the cliff and behind it, at the base of the cliff, is the sacred spring.

Around the upper terrace are some of the site's most striking carvings: a naga, an elephant carved from a boulder, the famous crocodile stone and a relief of the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. Today the temple serves Buddhist worship, and a pilgrimage festival at Makha Bucha, in January or February, draws crowds each year. Vat Phou and the surrounding cultural landscape of Champasak, with its ancient cities and roads, were inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2001. A museum at the entrance holds statues of Shiva, Vishnu and Nandin as well as early Buddhist images.

Getting there

Vat Phou lies in Champasak province, about 30 km in a straight line from Pakse, the main town of southern Laos, near the west bank of the Mekong. Pakse International Airport (PKZ) is about 32 km away. The site is reached by road from Pakse via the riverside town of Champasak.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Laos 9The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Ruins 15The Most Beautiful Ruins 36The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

Vat Phou is a ruined Khmer-Hindu temple complex in southern Laos. There was a sanctuary on the site, centred on a spring and an offering place for a tutelary spirit dating back to pre-historic times. The first megalithic stone structures had been built probably as early as the second century BCE, consisting of two stone cells, a carving of a crocodile, serpent stairs, and offering platforms. One of the pre-Angkor brick buildings onsite was erected in the 7th century and became the focus of consequent building activities.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

14.84892, 105.81572per Wikidata