History

The Champa kingdom (c. 192-1832 CE) was a maritime Hindu civilization that controlled the central and southern coastal regions of what is now Vietnam for nearly two millennia. Champa was a contemporary, neighbor, and frequent rival of the Khmer empire of Cambodia; the two civilizations traded, fought, and influenced each other across centuries, but they followed very different artistic and architectural traditions. While the Khmer built in stone at Angkor, the Cham built in brick — and their brickwork, fired locally and laid with an organic resin of extraordinary adhesive strength, is technically one of the most remarkable achievements of pre-modern construction in Asia.

The valley of My Son was dedicated to the principal Cham deity Bhadresvara — a form of Shiva identified with the founding king of the dynasty — by King Bhadravarman I in the late 4th century CE. Every subsequent Cham king built or restored temples here: the site functioned simultaneously as a royal mausoleum, a place of ritual power, and a treasury. The French colonial scholar Henri Parmentier documented the site systematically in the early 20th century, identifying and cataloguing all surviving structures. UNESCO and Polish conservation teams began restoration work after 1981.

During the Vietnam War the valley was used as a staging base by the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong). US bombing in August 1969 destroyed a significant portion of the surviving temples, including what archaeologists had designated Group A, considered the finest ensemble of Cham architecture. The damage is irreversible and represents one of the major cultural heritage losses of the 20th century.