Quan Su Pagoda

Quan Su Pagoda, the Temple of the Ambassadors, is a central Hanoi temple serving as headquarters of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha. Its name recalls a fifteenth-century guesthouse for envoys from neighbouring Buddhist kingdoms, near which the temple later rose. The present buildings, rebuilt in the 1930s, blend traditional Vietnamese forms with reinforced construction and hold gilded statues on tiered altars. As an administrative and educational centre it houses a Buddhist institute and library, and draws steady worshippers amid incense smoke.