Phat Diem Stone Cathedral

Late in the 19th century, in the Kim Sơn area of Ninh Binh, a priest decided to build a church. He did not want a Western church with a pointed spire and stained glass windows. He wanted a Vietnamese one, with curved roofs like the roof of a communal house, wooden pillars like those of a pagoda, and stone like the stone of the northern mountains. His name was Phêrô Trần Lục, and people called him Cụ Sáu. What he built is the Phát Diệm Stone Cathedral.

From 1875 to 1898, for 23 years, Cụ Sáu directed the building of the complex. The stone was brought from two distant mountains, Thiện Dưỡng and Nhồi, and some of the slabs weigh as much as 20 tons. Ironwood was chosen for the pillars inside. There was no industrial cement and no modern machinery. There was only human strength, and the patience of one man who gave nearly a quarter of a century to making a place of worship.

The result is a complex laid out in a set order. Entering from the south, the parts follow one another like this: ponds and a lake, the Phương Đình, the large church with smaller churches beside it, three artificial grottoes, and finally the stone church. It is a journey through space that was planned on purpose.

It begins with the ponds and lake in front. They make a pause, a flat stretch of still water before the complex itself. In Vietnamese folk architecture, "water in front, mountain behind" is a rule for choosing land. This is a Catholic church, yet its designer understood that language of space.

The Phương Đình comes next, and it is the image that many people remember best of Phát Diệm. It stands 25 meters high, 24 meters long and 17 meters deep, with three stories built entirely of blue stone. A large drum hangs on the second story. On the third hangs a bell cast in 1890. The bell is 1.4 meters high and 1.1 meters across, and weighs nearly 2 tons. The most striking thing is the roof. It is not pointed and upright like a Western bell tower. It is low and curved, like the roof of a Vietnamese communal house or pagoda. That is what makes Phát Diệm look strange and familiar at the same moment.

The large church, also called the cathedral, was opened in 1891. It is 74 meters long, 21 meters wide and 15 meters high. Inside are six rows of ironwood pillars. The two middle rows rise 11 meters, and each pillar weighs about 10 tons. In the innermost bay stands an altar cut from a single block of stone. It is 3 meters long, less than a meter wide and weighs about 20 tons. Flowers and leaves are carved on three of its sides.

The complex also holds four small churches beside the large one, and three artificial grottoes on the north side. The grottoes are made of natural stone blocks, large and small, left in their natural shapes, so that they feel like real caves. The Lộ Đức grotto is described as the most beautiful of the three.

The last stop gives the whole complex its familiar name. It is the Church of the Heart of Mary, usually called the stone church. Here almost everything is stone: the floor, walls, pillars, window bars, altar and carved panels. On the walls are reliefs of pine, plum, chrysanthemum and bamboo, the traditional set of four plants in Vietnamese art. A Catholic church carved with these four plants is a rare sight, and part of what sets Phát Diệm apart.

There is one more thing about the name Phát Diệm. According to the national tourism database, Nguyễn Công Trứ gave the place that name in 1829. He was organizing the clearing of new land in the Kim Sơn area, and the name means giving rise to beauty. That land was coastal silt flats, newly cleared. Within half a century it held a group of buildings that all of Indochina talked about.