Cổ Loa citadel: what its heritage managers describe, and what a visit involves

The short answer

Cổ Loa is a citadel of three earthen ramparts and moats that its managers attribute to King An Dương Vương of the Âu Lạc state, and that Ngô Quyền used as his capital after 938.[10][2] It is managed by the Cổ Loa management board, a unit of the Thang Long – Hanoi Heritage Conservation Centre, which also runs the Imperial Citadel in central Hanoi.[5] The board's undated visitor page gives tickets and opening days, set out below; XTOUR has not confirmed that they are current.[1]

Who manages it

Hanoi's People's Committee created the Cổ Loa Heritage Management Board by Decision 7228/QĐ-UBND of 30 December 2014, according to the centre's 2015 announcement, as a unit affiliated with the Thang Long – Hanoi Heritage Conservation Centre. Its tasks include receiving and guiding domestic and international visitors, organising festivals with the local government, and charging entrance fees under city rules.[5][8] The board runs its own website, thanhcoloa.vn, which carries the visitor information below; the centre's site carries the longer history articles.[6]

What the site is

The board's introduction dates Cổ Loa to the third century BC and calls it the capital of Âu Lạc. It describes three walls: an outer ring of about 7,880 metres and a middle ring of about 6,310 metres, both following natural mounds and marshland without a regular shape, and a rectangular inner wall of about 1,730 metres with a single gate in the middle of its south side and twelve projecting earth bastions.[2] The board's page on the ramparts gives the combined circuit as 16,000 metres, and the centre's 2015 article on the master plan gives "about 16 kilometres".[9][3]

The evidence the board cites is archaeological as well as written. It lists excavations of the middle wall and moat in 2007, of the outer wall in 2012 and of an inner-wall bastion in 2014. Cuts through the wall found a layer of stones laid at its foot under clay,[3][2] and an excavation behind the An Dương Vương temple in late 2004 and early 2005 found traces of a bronze-casting workshop and stone moulds for casting bronze arrowheads.[3]

Cổ Loa's history did not end with Âu Lạc. The board's timeline and the centre's 2026 seminar report both make it the capital Ngô Quyền chose after his victory at Bạch Đằng in 938; the board then describes the area gradually returning to village life from the 11th century.[10][2]

Cổ Loa was listed as a national relic in 1962 and became a special national relic in 2012, the centre's master-plan article records.[9] In June 2026 the centre held a seminar to finish a summary report on the site, as a step towards a dossier asking UNESCO to consider it for the Tentative List. The experts were still discussing what the property should be called, and nothing in the report says when a nomination might be made.[10] Cổ Loa is not a World Heritage site.

Legend and history, kept apart

Cổ Loa is surrounded by stories, and the centre's own pages label them. Its article on An Dương Vương calls Thục Phán the builder of Cổ Loa "according to the folk legend", and tells the legend that the walls kept collapsing until the golden turtle Kim Quy showed the king where to build. The same article tells the story of Mỵ Châu and Trọng Thủy, in which Zhao Tuo's son marries the king's daughter and learns the king's "military secret", as the cause of Âu Lạc's fall, without calling it legend there.[11] The board's introduction does: it lists the Kim Quy crossbow and the love of Mỵ Châu and Trọng Thủy among the legends tied to the citadel.[2] The board's temple page ties the pond and the Ngọc well in front of Đền Thượng to that legend, also "theo truyền thuyết", according to legend.[4]

On the end of Âu Lạc, the centre's article records a disagreement rather than a date: most historical books put it in 208 BC, while the Vietnamese school textbook, following Sima Qian, puts it at about 179 BC.[11] XTOUR keeps both.

What stands at the centre

The relics at the core of the site, as the 2015 master-plan article lists them, are Đền Thượng (the An Dương Vương temple), the Ngự Triều communal house, the Mỵ Châu temple and Bảo Sơn pagoda.[9] The board's page on Đền Thượng says the temple, on the evidence of its surviving architecture and objects, may date from about the 17th–18th centuries; it has a pair of stone dragons at the outer gate made in 1732 and a bronze statue of An Dương Vương weighing 200 kg dated 1897.[4]

Tickets and getting there

According to the Co Loa management board's visitor page, an adult ticket costs 30,000 VND per visit; pupils and students aged 16 and over with a card, and Vietnamese citizens aged 60 and over with ID, pay 15,000 VND; children under 15 and people with meritorious service to the revolution enter free. The same page says the site is open every day of the week.[1] The page carries no date, and XTOUR has not confirmed that these prices are current.

The visitor page lists the approaches by motorbike and car via the Thăng Long, Nhật Tân and Chương Dương bridges, and bus routes 46, 43, 15 and 17, and 59, without route details in its text.[1] XTOUR does not publish travel times and has not verified the bus routes. The board's ramparts page places it in Hà Nội, north of the city centre.[3] XTOUR has no Cổ Loa place record and treats Hanoi as the base for a visit, not as the site's container.

Under "Thời điểm du lịch" (when to visit), the page suggests autumn, and in particular the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st and 26th of the month, to catch the old periodic market.[1] It does not say whether those are solar or lunar dates, and XTOUR does not know.

Festivals and ritual days

The centre's 2013 article dates the main Cổ Loa festival to the 6th day of the first lunar month: held every year until 1945, then interrupted and later restored, it once ran for twelve days and is now celebrated for two. After the offering at Đền Thượng, the statue of An Dương Vương is carried to the Ngự Triều Di Quy communal house.[12] The board's report on the 2026 spring festival, dated 25 February 2026, lists crossbow shooting, wrestling, human chess, swings, tuồng theatre, water puppetry and quan họ singing among the games.[7] That festival falls soon after Tết, which the Tết article covers.

The board's news in September 2026 also marked two dates in the eighth lunar month: An Dương Vương's birth anniversary on the 11th, and a custom held at the Mỵ Châu shrine on the 13th.[6]

Where the site is, in the sources' own words

The 2015 sources place the board's office in Chùa hamlet, Cổ Loa commune, Đông Anh district, and the master plan's 860.4 hectares across Cổ Loa, Dục Tú, Việt Hùng and Uy Nỗ communes of Đông Anh district, Hà Nội.[9][8] The board's undated ramparts page names Cổ Loa, Dục Tú and Việt Hùng communes of Đông Anh district.[3] These are the units named on those dates. XTOUR does not state which units replaced them after Vietnam's 2025 reorganisation; the province mergers article explains why.

What XTOUR does not know

• XTOUR does not know whether the board's undated ticket prices and opening days are current.
• Whether the market days on the visitor page are solar or lunar.
• How much of each rampart can be walked, and accessibility for visitors with limited mobility; no page XTOUR read addresses them.
• When, or whether, a UNESCO nomination will be made.

For the sister site in central Hanoi, run by the same centre, see the Imperial Citadel guide.