Temples & Pagodas

Three religions on the same street, and mostly free

A Vietnamese chùa is a Buddhist pagoda; a đền is a temple to a person, a hero or a deity; a đình is a communal house belonging to a village or a street. Hanoi has all three within a few hundred metres of each other, plus a Taoist temple guarding the north of the old capital and a Catholic cathedral in the middle of it.

Almost none of them charge. Tran Quoc, the One Pillar Pagoda and Quan Thanh are free; Ngoc Son, on its island in the lake, is the one that takes a ticket.

How to behave, in four lines

• Shoulders and knees covered. A scarf in the bag solves this for the whole trip.
• Shoes off where the mats start, not at the outer gate. Watch what everyone else has done.
• Step over the threshold beam, not on it.
• Do not photograph people praying, and do not photograph up at an altar with someone in front of it. The buildings are fair game; the worship is not.

⭐ If you want to make an offering, buy the incense at the gate rather than bringing your own, and take the number of sticks the person ahead of you took.

When to go

The first and fifteenth days of the lunar month are the busy ones, and Tết — the lunar new year — fills every temple in the city and empties every shop. If you are here for it, go: it is the best week of the year to see these places used rather than visited. Just do not expect to eat in the Old Quarter.

Otherwise: early. The stupa on West Lake at sunset is the photograph; the courtyard behind it at eight in the morning is the visit.