Vat Phou

The earliest stone structures consisted of two stone cells, a carving of a crocodile, serpent stairs and offering platforms. The mountain above the site gained spiritual importance from a lingam-shaped protuberance on its summit and was therefore considered the home of Shiva, with the river representing the ocean or the Ganges.

The site museum houses statues of Shiva, Vishnu and Nandin as well as Buddhist statues. The museum building has been limited to a specific size to minimise alteration of the underground site and the view.

Vat Phou was initially associated with the city of Shrestapura, which lay on the bank of the Mekong directly east of Lingaparvata Mountain (later called Phou Khao). By the latter part of the fifth century the city was the capital of a kingdom that texts and inscriptions connect with the Chenla Kingdom and Champa, and the first structure on the mountain was constructed around this time.

The earliest known inscription found at the site, the Văt Luong Kău Inscription (K.365), mentions the name of Devanika, who established a sacred tīrtha in the area. It records that he offered thousands of cattle to a temple foundation. Standing Buddhas in Gupta and post-Gupta style are among the pieces held in the site museum; Pierre-Yves Manguin groups them with comparable statues from Thailand and from Cham sites in central Vietnam as evidence of an artistic vocabulary shared across the region between the 5th and the late 7th or early 8th century. A festival is held on the site each February.