Champa cultural treasures in Da Nang
The Champa Sculpture Museum in Da Nang City has been welcoming visitors for nearly a century.
Built in 1915 with sponsorship from the Ecole frangaise d’Extrreme-Orient (French Institute of the Far East), the museum is on the corner of Trung Nu Vuong Street and Bach Dang Street.
The building, designed by French architects Delaval and Auclair, was enlarged in 1936 and officially inaugurated three years later.
Since then, it has welcomed millions of visitors who come to admire the white building with its sophisticated decor, inspired by the simple but charming beauty of Champa temples and towers.
The latest facelift two years ago has expanded the display space to 3,000 square meters.
It now houses some 2,000 artifacts made from sandstone, bronze and terra-cotta which were collected from archeological excavations in the Central region.
Dating back to the 5th to 15th centuries, the relics are divided into three categories – statues, altars and decorative pieces.
There are also over 40 paintings, diagrams and sketches of Champa temples and towers in the central region.
The museum has ten rooms named by the locations where the relics were found, including My Son, Tra Kieu, Quang Tri and Quang Binh.
The fan dance was a popular performance of the ancient Champa people, and some of the finest pieces in the museum’s collection are sculptures of Champa female dancers.
The valuable statues were found at the Tra Kieu (Simhapura – Lion Citadel) archeological site in Quang Nam Province.
It was the first capital city of the Champa Kingdom between the 4th and 8th centuries; nothing remains of the ancient city now but the rectangular ramparts.
The people of Champa were descended from Malayo-Polynesian settlers who appear to have reached the Southeast Asian mainland from Borneo in the 1st and 2nd centuries B.C.
The Cham were introduced to Hinduism through trading with India, and were heavily influenced by Indian art.
The Champa kingdom controlled what is now southern and central Vietnam from approximately the 7th century through 1832.
It had a turbulent history and became a part of modern Vietnam in 1832.
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