Co Loa, the spiral citadel older than Hanoi
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Co Loa is where Vietnamese history starts being a place rather than a story. A capital laid out in the third century BC in three spiral rings of earth, half an hour north of Hanoi and largely invisible.
What actually survives?
Earth. Three concentric ramparts went up here, the outer one running roughly 8 km around. What is left are long low banks between rice fields, with lanes and houses on top and ponds in the old ditches below.
Nothing stands above head height except the temples, which are later. The site is a landscape rather than a monument. That is the honest warning for anyone expecting walls: you are looking at the shape of a city two thousand years gone, in the contours of a farming village.
What is the crossbow story?
A golden turtle gave An Duong Vuong, the king who built Co Loa, one of its claws. He made a crossbow from it that could kill a thousand men at a shot. Trieu Da, the general to the north, could not take the citadel while he had it.
So his son married My Chau, the king's daughter, and she showed him the crossbow. He swapped the trigger and the next attack succeeded. The king rode for the coast with My Chau behind him dropping goose feathers to mark the way, which is how the pursuit followed. At the sea he killed her. A shrine on the site holds a headless stone said to be her body, and it is the most visited thing here.
| What | Time | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| An Duong Vuong temple | Half an hour | Eighteenth century, on the inner rampart |
| My Chau shrine | Twenty minutes | The headless stone, always with incense |
| The ramparts | An hour | Walk or ride a lane along the top |
| Communal house and well | Twenty minutes | The village's own, still in use |
| Display of finds | Half an hour | The bronze drum and the arrowheads |
Is any of the legend true?
The archaeology is more interesting than the question. Excavations in the 1950s and again in 1982 turned up a bronze drum of the Dong Son culture packed with some two hundred objects. Among them were bronze arrowheads by the thousand, and the moulds that cast them.
A capital that mass-produced arrowheads is a capital that was arming for exactly the kind of siege the story describes. The crossbow is a story about a real weapons industry, which is not the same as a story about a turtle.
Can you see the ramparts at all?
You can, once you know what to look for. The inner rampart is the clearest: a bank 2 to 3 m above the fields enclosing about 1.6 km of circuit, with the temple on top of it and a lane along the crest, and the pond below it is the old moat rather than a village fish pond.
Ride or walk a kilometre of that lane and the shape resolves. The middle and outer rings are harder, broken by roads and built over in places, and a map at the temple shows where they ran. That half hour is the visit; everything else here is a shrine.
What is the festival?
The main festival falls on the sixth day of the first lunar month and runs to the sixteenth. It fills the temples and the lanes for several days, with processions between the shrines. It is a village festival rather than a national one, which is its appeal.
At any other time the site is quiet enough to be alone in. The festivals guide covers how the lunar dates move from year to year.
How does it compare with the citadel in Hanoi?
The two sites are two thousand years apart and both called a citadel. The imperial citadel at Thang Long is a walled palace complex with excavated foundations and a museum. Co Loa is earth in a field with temples on it.
Go to Thang Long first. Co Loa makes sense as a second visit, for a reader who has started wondering what was here before the eleventh century. The answer is this, and it was already old.
How do you get there?
About 17 km north of central Hanoi in Dong Anh district, half an hour by taxi or motorbike across the Red River. The number 46 bus from Long Bien also runs there. Entry is free or a token fee at the temple.
Allow two hours including the ride out. Co Loa pairs badly with anything else, because everything worth seeing on that side of the river is further north again. The day trips page covers the alternatives for a full day.
FAQ
What is Co Loa?
Co Loa is the earthwork capital of the kingdom of Au Lac, built in the third century BC about 17 km north of central Hanoi. Three rings of earth rampart survive in the fields and villages, and it is the oldest capital site in Vietnam.
How old is Co Loa?
The citadel dates to around the third century BC, under King An Duong Vuong, which makes it roughly two thousand years older than the imperial citadel in Hanoi. Bronze Age objects found on the site are older still.
What is the crossbow legend?
A golden turtle is said to have given An Duong Vuong a claw that made a crossbow able to kill a thousand men at a shot. His daughter My Chau revealed it to her husband, the son of a Chinese general, and the kingdom fell. The temples on the site are hers and her father's.
What is there to see at Co Loa?
The earth ramparts, now grown over and built on; the temple of An Duong Vuong; the small shrine to My Chau with its headless stone; the communal house; and a display about the bronze drum and weapons found here.
How do you get to Co Loa from Hanoi?
About 17 km north across the Red River, half an hour by taxi or motorbike, in Dong Anh district. Public bus 46 from Long Bien runs there, and the site is spread over farmland once you arrive.
Is Co Loa worth visiting?
For anyone interested in the deep history, yes, with the warning that there is very little to look at. The ramparts read as low hills with houses on them, and the visit is about standing in the place rather than seeing a monument.