Time Astra

Wing of Statecraft & Arms · Hall 4

Hall of Vietnamese Commanders

Modelled on Văn Miếu – Quốc Tử Giám (Temple of Literature), Hà Nội, Việt Nam.

Walk into the hallThe Temple of Literature among the wondersAll the halls

Who stands here

Forty-one commanders, from the Trưng sisters to Văn Tiến Dũng, numbered in the order of their battles. Forty stand as stelae on stone turtles, their names cut in the stone, in the four stele houses nearest Thiên Quang well, facing it as the doctors' stelae in the outer houses do: read round the well from Khuê Văn Các, up the west side from the south and down the east side from the north. Võ Nguyên Giáp, the general of Điện Biên Phủ, is honoured at the altar of the Bái Đường.

Floor plan

In metres, the entrance at the bottom
Floor plan of the Hall of Vietnamese Commanders, each figure numbered where it stands

The building

Văn Miếu – Quốc Tử Giám (Temple of Literature)

Five walled courtyards on a north–south axis: Văn Miếu Môn gate, Khuê Văn Các pavilion, Thiên Quang well flanked by 82 doctors' stelae on stone turtles, Đại Thành Môn, Bái Đường and Đại Thành sanctuary.

Temple of Literature, Hanoi on Wikipedia

The model

At real size from OpenStreetMap's plan, turned so the axis through the five gates runs straight: the four pillars on the street, the walled enclosure (330 × 75 m) and its five courtyards, every gate, the ponds and lawns, Khuê Văn Các on its four piers, Thiên Quang well between eight stele houses and two pavilions, the long side halls, the Bái Đường, the Thượng Điện and the Thái Học court of 2000. Heights from the published bays and columns. The walk builds it in the northern way: tiled roofs with upturned corners on lacquered columns, walls of old brick, the gates whitewashed and weathered as photographs show them (Văn Miếu Môn with its arch, key-fret windows, balustraded terrace and belfry), the courts paved in square brick, and the 82 stelae on stone turtles sculpted after photographs of the real ones (one body, three heads mixed along the rows), the commanders' in the four houses nearest the well, the doctors' in the rest; the ponds and Thiên Quang well behind whitewashed balustrades, their water green-brown, reflecting the sky. The four pillars are whitewashed and weathered as a photograph shows them, a framed panel sunk in each face; the couplets and the lanterns' carvings that photograph shows are cut from it, and their tops sculpted after it: a nghê on each middle pillar facing in, four phoenixes on each outer one. The Bái Đường is open to its court, as it stands, across the seven middle bays: dim under its deep roof, its red framing, its board 萬世師表, gilt friezes and couplets cut from photographs of it, lanterns, the altar between two bronze cranes on turtles, and on its ridge two dragons facing the sun; behind it the Tiểu Đình joins it to the Thượng Điện. The court of great worship's roofs are terracotta, as photographed.