Turn off the village road of Liễu Cốc Thượng, walk past a few garden plots and a low-lying patch of ground that locals call Bàu Tháp, and you will come upon two dark red brick masses standing close together. Both have lost their roofs, their wall surfaces are chipped, and tree roots cling to the brick joints. Around the base of the towers lie refilled excavation trenches where the boundary between fresh soil and old earth is still visible. There is no altar and no temple keeper, only wind from the fields blowing through two empty sanctum chambers.
This is Liễu Cốc Tower (tháp Liễu Cốc), commonly called the Liễu Cốc Twin Towers (tháp đôi Liễu Cốc) by people in the region, a ruined Cham Hindu temple complex in the former northern territory of Champa. What draws the attention of archaeologists is that both structures are main sanctuary towers erected side by side within a single temple enclosure. The 2024 excavation also pushed the date of the complex back to around the late 9th century, roughly a hundred years earlier than previous estimates.
IA temple whose presiding deity remains undetermined
The first question people ask when visiting a Cham tower is who is worshiped inside. At Liễu Cốc, the honest answer is that it has not yet been determined. The sources consulted by the library, including reports on the two excavation seasons and heritage dossiers, note that no intact linga, yoni pedestal, or deity statue has been found in its original worship position inside the sanctums. The second excavation season in 2025 did recover two stone fragments suspected to come from a yoni pedestal and one fragment suspected to come from a linga within the archaeological strata, but these scattered pieces are not sufficient to confirm the central object of worship, and no intact foundation stele survives. For that reason, the library does not state as a certainty that the temple was dedicated to Shiva, even though most known Cham temple towers worshiped Shiva and numerous stone reliefs of the bull Nandin were unearthed around the base.
What is certain is brief but clear. This was a Cham temple complex built in the kalan form, meaning each tower was an enclosed sanctuary with a narrow inner chamber housing the sacred emblem. Today the site is an inactive ruin where no Cham community performs rites, and where no later Vietnamese worship shrine has been superimposed as at some other Cham towers.
In the Hindu doctrine adopted by the Cham, a temple is the dwelling place of the deity through a sacred emblem, and the tower is a miniature image of the sacred mountain at the center of the cosmos. A temple complex normally has one principal sanctuary tower surrounded by a gateway tower, a treasury or fire tower, and auxiliary structures. Two main sanctuary towers standing side by side are rare, and that rarity makes researchers cautious, since the two towers might have honored two different deities, or one deity in two aspects, or been built at two successive moments. Without in-situ cult objects or complete inscriptions, every interpretation remains a working hypothesis.
The first excavation season from late April to early June 2024 covered more than 80 square meters under Decision 898/QĐ-BVHTTDL, conducted jointly by the former Thừa Thiên Huế Department of Culture and Sports and the Vietnam National Museum of History, and yielded 4,807 specimens. These included 3,936 architectural material specimens, 50 sandstone corner reliefs carved as heads of the sacred bull Nandin, 3 fragments of 10th-century Sanskrit stone steles, 3 Champa lime pots from the 9th to 11th centuries, and a round metal coin with a square hole cast with the four characters Nguyên Phong thông bảo from the 13th century. The most widely discussed find was a Buddha head relief carved from purple-gray slate measuring 20 centimeters high, 15 centimeters wide, and 10 centimeters thick, which VOV and Dân Việt date to the 11th to 12th centuries, whereas VTV dates it to the 10th to 11th centuries.
The date of this Buddha head is one to two centuries later than the construction of the towers. The most cautious reading is to treat it as evidence of a later Buddhist presence at the temple complex, rather than proof that the towers were originally built to worship the Buddha. Historically, the Cham practiced both Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, and it is not unusual for both traditions to leave traces on the same sacred ground, though at Liễu Cốc the published sources offer no further explanation.
The first common misunderstanding arises from reports of finding a Buddha head, which leads many people to conclude that Liễu Cốc was a Buddhist temple. The archaeological sources do not make that claim. The stone head is one artifact among thousands of specimens, dates from a period later than the towers, and was not found in the central worship position.
The second misunderstanding comes from the name twin towers (tháp đôi), which easily reminds visitors of the Đôi Towers (Tháp Đôi) in Quy Nhơn. The two sites differ completely in region, date, and architectural style. The word twin here simply refers to the presence of two main sanctuary towers within the enclosure.
IIFrom Bàu Tháp to two archaeological excavations
Liễu Cốc retains no intact foundation stele, as only 10 small fragments of 10th-century Sanskrit sandstone steles were recovered across the two excavation seasons, so all chronological figures here come from stratigraphy and architectural comparison. Because sources differ on the exact span, the library records both sides. According to the 2024 and 2025 excavation results reported by VOV, Dân Việt, and VTV, the temple complex was built around the late 9th century to the early 10th century, roughly a century earlier than prior estimates. Dân trí newspaper, by contrast, notes a possible date in the late 8th or early 9th century. Both spans represent archaeological estimates rather than a specific year.
Geographically, Liễu Cốc belonged to northern Champa. The consulted sources do not state which regional principality administered the temple, so the library does not assign a principality name to the site.
- Late 9th centuryConstruction of the temple complexDated by the 2024 and 2025 excavation results, with the North Tower built first and the South Tower erected about 10 to 20 years later. Another source notes a possible late 8th or early 9th century date.
- 11th to 12th centuriesBuddhist traceDate of the purple-gray slate Buddha head relief according to VOV and Dân Việt (VTV gives 10th to 11th centuries), later than the original construction layer.
- 13th centuryNguyên Phong thông bảo coinA 13th-century round metal coin with a square hole inscribed Nguyên Phong thông bảo among the excavated finds indicates continued human activity at the site during this period.
- 1926 and 1994Heritage classificationClassified in 1926 by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) as an ancient monument in Indochina. Ranked a national architectural and artistic heritage site on July 20, 1994 under Decision 921/QĐ-BT.
- 2024First excavation seasonConducted from late April to early June over more than 80 square meters, yielding 4,807 specimens and exposing the full foundation of the North Tower, the positions of the Gate Tower and Fire Tower, the eastern enclosure wall, and the connecting walkway.
- 2025Second excavation seasonAuthorized by Decision 1064/QĐ-BVHTTDL on April 17, 2025, opening 60 square meters of excavation pits and 6 square meters of test trenches from mid-May to late June, recovering 9,380 specimens and clarifying the South Tower foundation and enclosure walls.
Regarding physical condition, both towers are heavily damaged, having lost their roofs and large sections of wall. Even so, Pháp Luật TP HCM newspaper notes that this remains the best-preserved Cham monument cluster in the Huế area. Those two observations do not contradict each other, because most other Cham sites in the region survive only as buried foundations or mounds of broken brick, making the two standing wall masses at Liễu Cốc exceptional.
Regarding administrative boundaries, the site formerly belonged to Hương Xuân ward in Hương Trà town, both now former units. Under Resolution 1675/NQ-UBTVQH15 in 2025, Hương Xuân was merged with Hương Chữ and Hương Toàn to form Kim Trà ward, Huế city.
IIITwo main sanctuary towers in a single enclosure
What sets Liễu Cốc apart from other Cham temple complexes lies not in its wall carvings, since its attached surface ornament has largely fallen away, but in its ground plan. Archaeologists note that this is a rare monument in the Champa temple system in Vietnam with two parallel main sanctuary towers, whereas Cham complexes normally have either one or three principal towers. Through the two excavation seasons, the archaeological team determined that the North Tower was built first, while the South Tower was erected about 10 to 20 years later on a foundation roughly 0.4 meters larger and shifted about 0.2 meters further east than the North Tower.
Dân trí newspaper describes the building technique here as belonging to a transitional stage in Cham temple construction. The foundations of both towers were reinforced with clay mixed with sand and rammed firm on the surface with dark red laterite soil. Because the consulted sources do not assign the complex to a specific named style in the classification of Cham art, the library does not attach a style label to it.
Built first. The 2024 and 2025 excavations exposed its entire ground plan, scale, vestibule structure, and eastern entranceway. The tower body still stands without its roof, with cracked and chipped walls.
Standing parallel beside the North Tower as a second main sanctuary, built about 10 to 20 years later, roughly 0.4 meters larger in scale and shifted 0.2 meters east. Its base was buried underground, while its outer walls retain traces of corner pilasters, wall pilasters, and false doors.
The central sanctuary area is surrounded by brick enclosure walls on the north, south, and east, entered through an eastern Gate Tower (tháp Cổng), with the foundation of a Fire Tower (tháp Hỏa) and a brick-paved walkway linking the South Tower to the North Tower.
A total of 114 sandstone corner reliefs shaped like the head of the bull Nandin (50 from the first season, 64 from the second), 4 octagonal stone tower spire fragments, and a Makara sea-monster fragment recovered underground show that the roof tiers once carried sandstone ornament.
To read the marks of age when standing before two brick towers stripped of their ornament, visitors can look closely at three features. First is the brickwork, where Cham bricks are laid flush with almost no visible mortar joint, a masonry technique still legible on intact wall sections. Second is the wall thickness relative to the interior chamber, with thick walls enclosing a narrow cella in keeping with a kalan built to house a sacred emblem rather than a congregation. Third is the spacing between the two towers, set close together in parallel without a third tower between them, showing that the builders treated the two sanctuaries as equals.
To see a Cham temple complex that still retains its full layout and carved ornament, visitors can compare this site with Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary. Liễu Cốc is worth seeing for a different reason, as a temple complex stripped down to its structural bones where archaeology is piecing the original form back together season by season.
IVThe lie of the land and orientation
The Cham built their temples according to Hindu sacred rules rather than East Asian geomancy. Those rules are consistent, as the main doorway of a sanctuary tower normally faces east toward the rising sun, the tower stands on elevated ground such as a mound or hill, and the enclosure is linked to the concepts of the sacred mountain and a water source. At Liễu Cốc, results from the 2024 and 2025 excavations confirm that the vestibule, the entranceway, and the main enclosure wall with its Gate Tower all lie on the eastern side of the two sanctuaries, matching the canonical eastern entrance of Cham temples. The section below presents a comparative reading by the library through the lens of traditional Vietnamese geomancy alongside Hindu temple rules, not something recorded in any historical text about the site, as the two systems differ at their root.
The first detail a reader trained in landform analysis will notice is the local name Bàu Tháp. A bàu is a low-lying depression that holds water. In traditional Vietnamese siting, water pooling in front of a place of worship represents water gathering (thủy tụ), which retains and gathers qi rather than letting it disperse. The Cham builders did not reason in those terms, yet their practice of pairing a temple with a ritual water source arrives at the very feature that East Asian geomancy values. Two distinct traditions point to the same watered ground.
The second feature is the position on a low alluvial mound near the Bồ River, between the low plain and the northern hill belt. Liễu Cốc lies about 11 kilometers north of central Huế in the lower Bồ River basin, where the flat alluvial plain begins rising toward rolling hills. In the eye of traditional geomancy, such a transition zone is where the land begins to acquire a backing, higher behind and sloping gently down toward the fields in front. Read in this way, the temple sits along the edge of a supporting landform even without a towering mountain immediately behind it.
The third feature is the pair of two sanctuaries standing shoulder to shoulder. Traditional Vietnamese siting reads a compound along a single central axis, with one primary hall flanked by two secondary wings. Two equal masses without a central hall form an unfamiliar arrangement to that eye, reminding visitors that the builders followed a different rule in which each tower is a complete temple in its own right rather than a wing of a shared house.
Finally, there is its spatial relationship with later Huế. Thiên Mụ Pagoda on Hà Khê Hill stands about 6.8 kilometers away. When Vietnamese builders chose a hill for their pagoda, they read the land through their own tradition, just as the Cham centuries earlier chose an alluvial mound for their temple through theirs. Both choices sit close together in the same region, and both sought out high ground beside water.
VTraces of worship beneath the soil
Liễu Cốc no longer hosts Cham rituals. No Cham Balamon community comes here to perform rites, and the consulted sources record no festival associated with the towers. Accordingly, this section does not list an active festival calendar, but summarizes the material traces of worship unearthed in 2024 and 2025 and what each group of finds reveals about the life of the sanctuary across the centuries.
| Artifact group | Date | What it indicates |
|---|---|---|
| Architectural bricks and tiles (over 12,700 specimens across two seasons) | Late 9th to early 10th century | The original temple construction layer included both tower bricks and roof tiles for auxiliary buildings, representing a transitional building technique. |
| Nandin bull corner reliefs (114 fragments), tower spires, and suspected yoni and linga fragments | Late 9th to 10th century | The temple once carried sandstone corner ornaments depicting the sacred bull Nandin associated with Shaivism. |
| 10 fragments of Sanskrit sandstone steles | 10th century | The complex once held Sanskrit inscriptions recording temple foundations or ritual endowments, later shattered into small fragments. |
| Ceramics and 5 Champa lime pots | 9th to 11th centuries and later layers | Traces of daily life, betel chewing, and ritual offerings around the sanctuary. |
| Purple-gray slate Buddha head relief (20 x 15 x 10 cm) | 11th to 12th centuries (VOV, Dân Việt) or 10th to 11th centuries (VTV) | Evidence of a later Buddhist presence at the temple complex, postdating the construction of the towers. |
| Nguyên Phong thông bảo metal coin | 13th century | Continued human passage and activity across the site in a later period. |
To see a Cham temple tower where rituals and worshipers remain active today, readers can consult the entry on Po Klong Garai Towers, where Cham Balamon priests still open the sanctuary doors every year for the Katê festival. Liễu Cốc belongs to a different category, a sanctuary where worship ceased centuries ago and whose story is now told by the layers of the earth.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Khu Bàu Tháp, làng Liễu Cốc Thượng, phường Kim Trà (phường Hương Xuân cũ, thị xã Hương Trà cũ), thành phố Huế. Nghị quyết 1675/NQ-UBTVQH15 gộp Hương Xuân, Hương Chữ, Hương Toàn thành phường Kim Trà. Cách trung tâm Huế chừng 11 km về phía bắc
- Getting there
- Bàu Tháp area, Liễu Cốc Thượng village, Kim Trà ward, Huế city, roughly 11 kilometers north of central Huế.
- Coordinates
- 16.5081, 107.5165
This is an archaeological ruin rather than an active place of worship, so the rule here is to protect the soil and the brickwork. Do not climb onto the tower bodies, step down into excavation trenches, or take brick or pottery shards as souvenirs. When an excavation is underway, remain outside the roped boundary. If lighting incense, place it only in the spot designated by the caretaker and never push incense sticks into joints between the bricks.
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?Quick Questions
Who is worshiped at Liễu Cốc Twin Towers
It has not been conclusively determined. Excavations have not found an intact linga, yoni, or deity statue in its original worship position inside the sanctums, recovering only two stone fragments suspected to come from a yoni pedestal, one fragment suspected to come from a linga, and 114 stone fragments carved as heads of the bull Nandin in the soil layers. The towers are Cham temples built in the Hindu tradition, but the library does not name a specific presiding deity without in-situ cult objects or a deciphered foundation stele.
How old are the Liễu Cốc Twin Towers
According to the 2024 and 2025 excavation results reported by VOV, Dân Việt, and VTV, the temple complex was built around the late 9th to early 10th century, with the North Tower built first and the South Tower erected about 10 to 20 years later. Dân trí newspaper notes a possible late 8th or early 9th century date. Both are archaeological estimates.
Were the Liễu Cốc Twin Towers built as a Buddhist temple
There is no basis for that claim. The purple-gray slate Buddha head relief unearthed in the 2024 excavation dates from the 11th to 12th centuries according to VOV and Dân Việt (or the 10th to 11th centuries according to VTV), later than the construction of the towers, so scholars interpret it as evidence of a later Buddhist presence at the site rather than proof that the towers were built for the Buddha.
Where are the Liễu Cốc Twin Towers located
The towers stand in the Bàu Tháp area of Liễu Cốc Thượng village, Kim Trà ward, Huế city, on a low alluvial mound near the Bồ River about 11 kilometers north of central Huế. Prior to the 2025 administrative merger, the area belonged to Hương Xuân ward, Hương Trà town.
Why is the site called the Twin Towers
Because the temple enclosure contains two main sanctuary towers (the North Tower and the South Tower) standing parallel side by side, rather than one main tower accompanied by an auxiliary tower. Archaeologists consider this a rare layout in the Champa temple system in Vietnam. The name is unrelated to the Đôi Towers (Tháp Đôi) in Quy Nhơn.