With the age of more than 400 years, Keo pagoda is in greatly interesting destination in the North

Keo pagoda is located in Duy Nhat commune, Vu Thu District, Thai Binh Province, about 100km from Hanoi. It was built in 1630 and finished in 1632, under Le Dynasty.

It is one of the oldest pagodas in Vietnam which still remains mostly everything of original architecture.

The first house after the gate is a red-roof one-storey with huge strong ironwood pillars. In front of it are green fresh grass garden and areca-nut tree lines. On two sides of corridors are two old stones engraving the history of building Keo pagoda.

The stones record the total area of the pagoda (58.000 m2), containing different houses with different styles and functions. The remaining architecture today is 17 houses with very ancient Vietnamese style.

Two impressive corridors lead to the main shrine and the bell tower

The roofs of the houses are covered with red bricks with “carp transforming to dragon” sculpture.

The bell tower of Keo pagoda is the “pearl” in Vietnam’s architecture with unique design, dragon-graving doors

Beside amazing architecture, Keo pagoda is also the place to keep ancient and precious statues

Wood, brick and stone are the main materials to build the pagoda. It is considered as a great gallery to keeps quintessence of culture, tradition and architecture of Le Dynasty.

With the custom of worshiping Buddhist priest Khong Lo-Ly Quoc Su, Keo Festival is held in two periods of time in the spring and in the autumn: on the fourth day of the first lunar month, and from the 13th to the 15th day of the ninth lunar month.

Photo: Tran Viet Anh