Turtle Tower

Before the morning light has touched the streets, people are already standing on the shore of Hoan Kiem Lake, watching. They are not looking at mountains or clouds. They are looking straight out to the middle of the lake, where a brick tower of three levels stands still on a small mound of earth, its reflection lying on the flat water. This is Turtle Tower. People of Hanoi call its shape the face of their city.

According to a website on Hanoi's historic sites, the tower was built from the middle of 1884 to April 1886. It stands on a small mound in the southern part of the lake, with no road or bridge to it from the shore. Since the day it was raised, the tower can only be seen from afar, and that is why its image became so special to the people of Hanoi.

The three brick levels grow smaller toward the top. The first level is 6.28 meters long and 4.54 meters wide. Each of its sides opens in a pointed arched door in the Gothic style. The third level is only 2.97 meters long, with a single small round door facing east. Above it are carved three Chinese characters: Quy Sơn tháp, which means Tower of the Turtle Mountain. The top of the tower is shaped like a five-pointed star. The Gothic arches joined to Asian-style brickwork give the tower a look that is neither fully Western nor fully Eastern, a mark of Hanoi in the 1880s.

Who first proposed building the tower is still an open question. A Hanoi newspaper names a man called Nguyễn Hữu Kim. He was also known as Bá Kim, and he came from Cựu Lâu village. Some other sources record the name Nguyễn Ngọc Kim. The original purpose of the tower is also still debated. Whoever built it, and for whatever reason, the tower has stood there for more than 130 years.

One more detail is little known. According to a news report, in about 1891 the French placed a small copy of the Statue of Liberty on top of the tower. The statue was about 2.5 meters tall. It stayed there until about 1896, then it was moved to the Cửa Nam garden, and it was destroyed in 1945. Since then the tower has kept the shape it has today, three levels of brick.

Turtle Tower cannot be separated from Hoan Kiem Lake and Ngọc Sơn Temple. Together, the three make a special national heritage space in the center of Hanoi. The legend of the divine turtle that received the precious sword of Emperor Lê Thái Tổ has already been told in the story of Hoan Kiem Lake. Here it is enough to know that the name Turtle Tower is no accident.

The tower is the strongest visual symbol of Hanoi, and not because it is large. It is quite small. What gives it that place is that it stands alone in the water, joined to no shore and hidden by nothing. At any hour of the day, a person standing by the lake can see it. At dawn, the lake lies as flat as a mirror around it. At dusk, it stands against a red and orange sky. In winter fog, it grows faint like an ink-wash painting. It is one unchanging shape in a city that changes every day.