Banh It Cham Towers (Tháp Bánh Ít)

A complex of four brick towers of the 11th–12th centuries on a hilltop in Binh Dinh Province — one of the best preserved monuments of Cham civilisation. It is included in the list of 1001 architectural masterpieces of the world. The buildings are set out along the slope at different levels: at the foot of the stairway stands a gate tower, higher up an elongated building with a saddle-shaped roof resembling an upturned boat, and at the summit the main sanctuary, more than twenty metres high, with a tiered top and carved pediments. Such a combination of different types of building in a single complex is a rarity for Champa: usually only the central tower of a sanctuary remains. The name comes from the shape of the hill, which recalls the local rice cake banh it, while the French called the complex the Silver Tower — as a counterpart to the Golden Tower at Phu Loc. They removed part of the sculpture from here: a sandstone Shiva about a metre and a half tall, which stood in the main sanctuary, is now kept in the Musée Guimet in Paris, and a copy has been put in its place. The hill rises above rice fields roughly twenty kilometres from Quy Nhon, and from the terrace in front of the towers the whole valley of the Kon River can be seen. At the foot there is a statue of the Buddha and a small museum.

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