The One Pillar Pagoda, a lotus on a stone stem

The One Pillar Pagoda is the smallest famous building in Hanoi: a wooden shrine about three metres square, held above a pond on a single stone column. It takes five minutes and disappoints anyone expecting a temple. Knowing what it is meant to be changes that.

What is the One Pillar Pagoda?

The One Pillar Pagoda is a small wooden shrine raised on one stone pillar in a square lotus pond. It stands in the Ba Dinh quarter, about 3 km west of Hoan Kiem lake. Inside is an altar to Quan Am, the goddess of mercy. A short flight of brick steps climbs to it. The shrine is roughly three metres on a side, the pillar about 1.25 m across, and the roof sits some four metres above the water.

The Vietnamese name is Chua Mot Cot. The older name of the temple complex around it was Dien Huu, meaning lasting happiness. The pagoda has been an emblem of Hanoi for centuries. That is why the building is far better known than its size suggests.

Why is it built on a single pillar?

The pagoda is built on one pillar because it is meant to be a lotus. The flower rises on a single stem from muddy water and opens clean above it, the standard Buddhist image of enlightenment. The architecture states it literally: stem, water, blossom.

The legend attaches it to a specific emperor. Ly Thai Tong, childless and ageing, is said to have dreamt of Quan Am seated on a lotus, handing him a baby son. A son followed, and in 1049 he had the pagoda built in the shape of that dream. The pagodas guide explains what the altars inside a Vietnamese pagoda are for.

What happened to it in 1954?

French forces destroyed the pagoda in 1954, in the last days before they withdrew from Hanoi. It was rebuilt the following year to the old design. The pillar, the shrine and the pond are all a reconstruction.

The reconstruction is worth knowing about before you go. What stands is a faithful copy of an eleventh-century idea rather than an eleventh-century building. Very little wooden architecture of that age survives anywhere in the country, for the same reasons.

What does a visit cost, and how long does it take?

A visit costs nothing and takes five to ten minutes. The pagoda and its garden are free and open through the day. You walk around the pond, climb the steps, look at the altar and leave.

Shoulders and knees stay covered, as at any working shrine, and shoes come off if you step up into the shrine itself. The etiquette guide covers the rest.

When should you go?

Go early in the morning, before the coaches reach Ba Dinh, or in the late afternoon once the quarter has emptied. The garden is small, and twenty people in it is a crowd.

The first and fifteenth days of the lunar month are different again. Worshippers arrive with flowers and incense, and the smoke drifts over the pond. The pagoda is then doing the job it was built for rather than posing for photographs.

What else is in Ba Dinh?

The pagoda sits at the end of the walk through the mausoleum complex, so most visitors reach it having already seen the rest. The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum opens on a few mornings a week and closes on Mondays and Fridays. The Presidential Palace grounds and the stilt house sit between the two.

The Ho Chi Minh Museum stands directly beside the pagoda and charges about 40,000 dong. The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long is across the road, and the Temple of Literature is a fifteen-minute walk south.

Is it worth the detour on its own?

On its own, no. Nobody should cross Hanoi for a five-minute stop at a three-metre shrine. The visitors who come away disappointed are usually the ones who did.

As part of the Ba Dinh morning it is worth every one of those five minutes. It is also the one thing in that quarter whose design predates the twentieth century. The Hanoi things to do page sets out the walk, and the three-day route gives the quarter its morning.