Po Sah Inu Tower

Three red brick towers stand on a high hill beside the sea.

They are one of the most distinctive groups of Cham temple towers in the old Bình Thuận area. The Cham are a people of south-central Vietnam whose ancestors lived in the ancient kingdom of Champa. Today the old Bình Thuận area belongs to Lâm Đồng province.

The Po Sah Inư Tower stands on Bà Nài hill. The hill lies in the old Phú Hài area of Phan Thiết, about 7 kilometers northeast of the city center.

Documents from before 2025 give its address as Phú Hài ward in Phan Thiết city. The province was Bình Thuận. Since the administrative reorganization, all of old Bình Thuận has been part of Lâm Đồng province.

The Cham built this group around the end of the 8th century and the start of the 9th, about 1,200 years ago. Many sources in tourism and culture, along with the museums of Bình Thuận and Lâm Đồng, agree on this date. The style is called Hòa Lai, one of the early styles of Cham tower architecture that survive today.

In 1991, the state ranked the site as a national monument of architecture and art.

What the Lâm Đồng museum stresses most is the position of the towers. They are one of the few Cham tower groups built on a high hill by the sea that are still fairly intact in the eastern part of the province. The ancient Cham chose a hill open to the sky, with a view out to the sea. There they made a place of worship joined to a wide, sweeping view.

Three towers remain today. The main one, called Tower A, is about 16 meters high, according to the national tourism authority. It is the largest tower, and it holds the greatest architectural and religious value of the whole site. Inside is a set of stone Linga and Yoni, objects of worship tied to the god Shiva in Cham belief shaped by Hinduism.

Tower B stands apart to the north, about 12 meters high. One account places a tower for the bull god, also called Nandin, about 50 meters from the main one. Tower C is recorded as having first served the god of fire. It is about 5 meters high, and each side is nearly 4 meters wide.

From 1992 to 1995, archaeological digs found the foundations of many temples that had collapsed and been buried. This shows that the site was once much larger than what remains today.

The name Po Sah Inư belongs to a later layer of stories. By about the 15th century, according to local cultural sources, the Cham built a temple to Princess Po Sah Inư inside the tower grounds. From then on, the place slowly became tied to worship of her. The tale of the princess is a legend, a memory of faith kept by the Cham community of Bình Thuận. It is told here as cultural memory that has been looked after, not as a biography checked detail by detail.

Beyond its architecture and faith, the tower is a living heritage space. The Katê festival has been restored at the tower since 2005 and is held every year. In 2025 the festival opened at the Po Sah Inư tower once again. On festival days and at planned cultural programs, visitors can enjoy folk songs and dances, Paranưng drums, Saranai horns, pottery demonstrations, brocade weaving and Cham food.

On Bà Nài hill the sea wind blows without pause. Trees sway around the mossy red brick walls. The tower has stood here for more than a thousand years, through every change of land, sky and history. And each Katê season the Paranưng drum sounds again, as though time had never stopped flowing.