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ASEAN Heritage

Hoi An Ancient Town: A beautiful port connecting East and West

Edited by Korean National Commission for UNESCO

Viet Nam has the longest history of all Southeast Asian countries and a correspondingly rich array of historic sites. Places like Ha Long Bay, which has a beautiful natural landscape, and My Son, a Hindu temple complex of the resplendent Champa kingdom, are always full of tourists. Hoi An Ancient Town, which is located at the mouth of the Thu Bon River, is special because it still offers an undamaged, well-preserved view of what the bustling port city looked like many centuries ago. 

   According to records, Hoi An began to grow as a center of sea trade in the second century BC and eventually became a major port city of the Champa kingdom in the 15th century. From the late 16th until the early 18th century, Hoi An enjoyed a golden age from the influx of merchants from Asia and Europe that is evidenced its various former names, including Fayfo, Haifo, Kaifo, Faifoo, Faicfo, Hoai pho, and others. The city prospered as the largest commercial and cultural center of Southeast Asia. 

   Today, Hoi An is famous for its elegant urban landscape, which is made up of long, straight streets lined with pagodas, Buddhist temples, residential houses that double as shops, a pier, and traditional markets. It was made up of a peaceful, syncretic mixture of cultures due to an endless stream of Asian and European merchants from countries like India, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Buildings that were constructed in Chinese and Japanese architectural designs were especially harmonious with the surrounding traditional Vietnamese buildings. The two most well-known examples are the Assembly Hall of the Chaozhou Chinese Congregation and the Japanese Covered Bridge.  

    In addition to their blending of multiple cultures, another reason behind the captivating beauty of Hoi An Ancient Town’s buildings is the fact that most are wooden. The Assembly Hall of the Chaozhou Chinese Congregation, which was primarily a social gathering place for merchants from Guangdong Province who had settled permanently in Hoi An, and the arched Japanese Covered Bridge, which was built to encourage interaction between foreign merchants and locals, are both made of wood. Residential homes were made in the traditional Vietnamese style of a wooden structure with a tiled roof and tile decorations. The wooden buildings, constructed in the 17th and 18th century, were renovated several times. One noteworthy point is that each re-construction was done not with modern materials, such as steel or concrete, but only with materials that were used for the original versions—the reason that the city maintains much of its traditional appearance. 

   At the end of the 19th century, Hoi An eventually ceded its standing as Viet Nam’s most important port city to other regions to cities like Da Nang, which had a large port conducive to much larger ships that emerged at the turn of the century. Ironically, it was Hoi An’s loss of its role as a port city that made it possible to preserve its appearance as a traditional Southeast Asian trade center. In 1999, Hoi An Ancient Town was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its extensive efforts for preservation, unlike other regions of Viet Nam that shed their traditional layout and buildings in favor of a modern look.