Co Le Pagoda

From a distance, the pagoda looks like a church.

That is no illusion. It is a deliberate design.

Cổ Lễ Pagoda, also called Thần Quang Pagoda, stands in Cổ Lễ commune in Ninh Binh province. The area used to belong to Trực Ninh, in Nam Định province. It is one of the most unusual pagodas in Vietnam's northern delta, and not only because it is old. Its architecture breaks every expectation of a first-time visitor.

On September 11, 2025, the Prime Minister signed a decision ranking Cổ Lễ Pagoda a Special National Monument. Before that, the Ministry of Culture had ranked it a national monument in 1988.

According to records and folk tradition, quoted by the Nam Định newspaper from several old texts, the pagoda began in the Lý dynasty. It is tied to National Master Minh Không in the 12th century. This comes from tradition and quoted records, not from any independent excavation. The Lý dynasty ruled Vietnam from 1009 to 1225.

The story of the architecture, though, is concrete, and the eye can read it.

The whole complex runs from east to west. The first thing to catch the eye is the Cửu Phẩm Liên Hoa Tower. It is an octagonal tower with a base shaped like a turtle, built in the middle of a large lake. It stands 26.3 meters tall and has 11 floors. Inside, 64 steps wind around the central column to the top, where a bronze statue of Amitabha Buddha stands. Seen from outside, the tower rises from the water like an enormous stone pen.

From the tower, a vaulted bridge crosses Chu Tước Lake. The Cultural Heritage Department records that the bridge was built in 1921 and restored in 1954 and again in 2003. It is 10.60 meters long and 4 meters wide, with three arches. Chu Tước Lake is also called A Nốc Lake, and it joins the Cổ Lễ River. In festival season, the lake is where racing boats moor before the boat races.

Past the triple gate lies a courtyard of red brick, and then the Buddhist Assembly Hall, also called Trình Pagoda. The hall was built in 1936, during the Buddhist revival movement, as a place for teaching and for great ceremonies. So Cổ Lễ Pagoda is not a relic locked in the past. It was already a lively center of Buddhist life at the start of the 20th century.

Next comes Linh Quang Pagoda. It honors the revered general Trần Hưng Đạo and two scholars of the Trần dynasty who passed the highest examinations. They are Đào Toàn Phú and Đào Sư Tích. The Trần dynasty ruled Vietnam from 1225 to 1400. A place for the Buddha and for a famous general inside one pagoda complex is a rare sight.

Then comes the high point of the architecture, the Main Pagoda.

The Cultural Heritage Department finds the Main Pagoda unusually valuable as art, because it joins traditional Vietnamese architecture with the Gothic style of Christian churches. It is built of brick, lime, sand and cane molasses. From afar it looks like a church, but inside it is plainly a pagoda. There are high arched vaults and a wide upper hall. Behind them is the Địa Tạng palace, with 82 stone steles and statues of the Ten Kings of the Underworld on both sides. This blending is not a mistake, and it is not imitation. It shows an early 20th-century Vietnamese taste in architecture, confident in taking in the new without losing its own identity.

At the end of the route stands the Kim Chung Bảo Các bell tower. The Cultural Heritage Department records that it is 13 meters tall and has three floors. It covers 134 square meters. On the second floor hangs a bronze bell cast in 2003. It weighs 9,000 kilograms. On the third floor hangs a bell from the seventh year of the Cảnh Thịnh era, which is 1799. It weighs 300 kilograms. Two bells from two different centuries hang in one tower. That layering of time is very much the character of Cổ Lễ Pagoda.

One last story remains, from February 27, 1947. At Cổ Lễ Pagoda, with the Venerable Phạm Thế Long presiding, 27 monks and nuns made a vow, took off their monastic robes and set out to join the resistance. The Nam Định newspaper reports that from 1947 to 1981, 35 monks and nuns in all put on soldiers' uniforms, and 12 of them died.

That part is not easy to see under an arched roof or in walls of brick and molasses. But it is the part that makes Cổ Lễ Pagoda not only beautiful, but alive.