Da Lat Cathedral

Look up to the very top of the bell tower, where a small rooster stands. Small as it is, it is the reason people in Da Lat have called this building Nhà thờ Con Gà, the Rooster Church, for generations. Its official name is Da Lat Cathedral, and its patron saint is Saint Nicholas. It is the cathedral of the Da Lat Diocese. Still, the name taken from the rooster feels closer to home and is easier to remember, and it has become part of the memory of the city.

The story of the church begins in the 1920s, when the first Catholic community in Da Lat took shape. Father Celeste Nicolas was the parish priest of Da Lat from 1921 to 1946. He prepared the building project and stayed beside it through all the years of construction. On July 19, 1931, the first stone was laid. The ceremony was led by Colomban Dreyer, the representative of the Holy See in Indochina and Thailand.

The work went on for eleven years, in several stages. The sanctuary and the first bays were finished in 1932. Then came the nave and the foundations of the tower. Last of all, the bell tower was completed on January 14, 1942.

The church is 65 meters long and 14 meters wide, and the bell tower rises 47 meters. The main door faces Lang Biang Mountain to the north. The floor plan is a cross, and the arched doors and the symmetrical front follow the classical style of European Catholic architecture. Seen from across Trần Phú Street, the building is neither heavy nor overbearing. It looks light against the Da Lat sky.

Few people notice the colored glass inside. The church has 70 stained-glass windows, and 38 of them are pictures in glass made by the Louis Balmet workshop in Grenoble, France. When daylight passes through, the patches of color give the sanctuary a distinctive effect. The light changes through the day, so the feeling inside is always different in the morning and in the afternoon.

Along the walls on both sides are 14 reliefs showing the Passion of Jesus, the carvings of the sculptor Xuân Thi. The bell tower holds four bells, brought from the old church on January 15, 1942. The largest weighs 415 kilograms.

In 1960, the Da Lat Diocese was established, and the church of Saint Nicholas in Da Lat was chosen as its cathedral. The Lâm Đồng newspaper once placed it among the representative old buildings of Da Lat from the period of French rule that still stand today.

On a morning when mist still clings to the roof, the sound of the bells carries down from the tower, 47 meters high. Light slips through the 70 colored windows and lays patches of green and red across the stone floor. Da Lat keeps this church the way it would keep a part of its own soul.