Lieu Coc Twin Towers

Two Cham towers stand close together on the plain of Hương Trà, in Hue. They have waited there, quiet and patient, for more than a thousand years. These are the Liễu Cốc Twin Towers, one of the few Champa monuments left on the land of the old capital.

Their age is not the only thing that sets them apart. Across central Vietnam, a Cham tower usually stands alone, or belongs to a group laid out in tiers. Here the two main towers of worship stand side by side. They face the same way and have the same size, like two brothers who never part. Among the Cham towers known today, this layout is the only one of its kind.

Researchers believe the towers may have been built in the late 8th century, more than 1,200 years ago. Champa, an ancient kingdom on the central and southern coast of what is now Vietnam, was then at its height. Towers like these were the center of belief for a whole region.

In 1994, the Liễu Cốc Twin Towers were recognized as a national historic site. But the story did not end there.

When archaeologists began to dig, they found a quiet treasure in the ground around the towers. Nearly 5,000 pieces of Cham artifacts had lain still there through the centuries. Among them were pottery, tools and objects of worship, small pieces of the life of a civilization that once flourished on this land.

One can imagine Cham people coming here more than a thousand years ago to burn incense, bring offerings and pray in the shade of two towers that still stood whole. Since then the wind and rain of central Vietnam have passed over them for hundreds of seasons. Dynasties have changed. Yet the two towers still stand there side by side, as if to say that what people build with a sincere heart is not easily erased by time.

Hue is a land of many layers of history, laid one over another. Beneath each layer of earth, a story waits to be told. And these two brother towers, after more than a thousand years of silence, still have much to say.