Po Nagar Cham Towers

If you visit Nha Trang on the coastline of Vietnam you can visit the Tower Ponagar. The Po Nagar Tower is the name of the main temple in a complex of Cham towers. This temple sits on top a small hill about 50 meters high over the sea level, at the mouth of the Cai River. Nha Trang city center is about 2km north.

The overall architecture of the tower consists of 3 floors Ponagar, going from bottom to top. On the lower floors the ground level gate tower no longer exists. From there take the stone steps leading up to the mesosphere.

The Mesosphere is called Mandapa (ie guest house, retreat house) and is a place for pilgrims resting and prepare the offering. The Mandapa is 20m long, 15m wide and  consists of 4 octagonal columns. On the body of the mortise are large columns, carved deep into the shaft, horizontal symmetry with the top of the small columns.

The top floor is where the tower is located. The tower was built carefully with very tight circuit building blocks, without any seen binder. The main stupa here is quite large and about 23 meters high in the tower Ponagar. The tower has 4 floors. Each floor has a door, animal statues and stone formation. Inside the statue is carved in black marble grave stone pedestal siting on a lotus shape, with large stones leaning back on Bodhi leaf. This is a masterpiece of Cham Sculpture. It is a combination of technical harmonization and embossed circular object.

On top of the tower is a statue of the god Shiva Nandin riding ox and the mascot as swan, goat, elephant ...