Van Duc Pagoda
Riverside Buddhist temple with a national-relic bronze bell, carved printing blocks, and centuries of merchant-route history.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Van Duc Pagoda in Hoi An begins with the bronze bell still ringing behind its red gates, and traces the temple back to a monk named Minh Luong, who built a thatched hermitage on the banks of the Co Co River in the late 1600s as merchant boats passed between Hoi An's harbor and the sea route to Da Nang. It follows how small donations from that trade grew the hut into the pagoda known as Van Duc, ten thousand virtues, and how wealth passing along the river eventually filled it with old printing blocks, statues and imported porcelain. Look up at the eaves for the carved dragons and turtles above the sleeping Buddha in white.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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