Po Rome Temple
Ninh Phuoc District, Ninh Thuan Province, Vietnam
- Deities
- Shiva (as the deified king Po Rome)
- Traditions
- shaiva
- Worship status
- partially active
- Coordinates
- 11.44139, 108.94861
- Darshan hours
- Open as a heritage site; Cham veneration of King Po Rome continues on the traditional Cham ritual calendar rather than a daily worship schedule — confirm current details locally.
- Best time to visit
- The Kate festival period on the Cham calendar (typically around September/October) is the most significant time for Cham ritual veneration at Po Rome-associated sites.
- How to reach
- In Ninh Phuoc District, Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam, not far from the Po Klong Garai Temple near Phan Rang-Thap Cham.
Location
Open in Google MapsPo Rome Temple, in Ninh Phuoc District of Ninh Thuan Province not far from the better-known Po Klong Garai Temple, honors King Po Rome, who ruled the Champa kingdom from 1627 to 1651. Tradition holds that the Cham people, grieving his death in 1651, built the temple as a site of veneration for him — one of a distinctive group of Cham monuments dedicated not to conventional pan-Indian deities but to deified Cham kings understood within a Shaiva devotional framework, a pattern also seen at Po Klong Garai and Po Nagar elsewhere in Vietnam.
Sources note some uncertainty about the temple’s precise construction date, since a surviving carved sandstone pediment associated with the site has separately been dated as early as the 14th-16th century, suggesting the possibility of an earlier structure predating the traditional post-1651 founding account; that relief fragment is today held in the Museum of Vietnamese History. What is clear is that Po Rome remains, per available sourcing, “one of the principal deified figures in traditional Cham rites,” meaning the temple continues to carry active ritual significance for Vietnam’s Cham community rather than functioning purely as an archaeological ruin.
Sources
- historical record: Cross-checked against Wikipedia's account of Po Rome during verification pass: confirms the temple, located in Ninh Phuoc District, Ninh Thuan Province, was built to venerate King Po Rome, who ruled Champa from 1627-1651, with construction likely dating to after his death in 1651 (though some scholarship suggests an earlier structure may have predated the 17th century); confirms the article's statement that '[according to] tradition they built a temple for him, the Po Rome Temple ... located at Ninh Phuoc district, Ninh Thuan province,' built by Cham people mourning his death; confirms the temple remains 'a site for veneration of Po Rome, who is one of the principal deified figures in traditional Cham rites,' indicating ongoing ritual significance to the Cham community; confirms a surviving sandstone pediment relief ('ascetic figure, Po Rome, Ninh Thuan, 14th-16th century AD') now held in the Museum of Vietnamese History.
For review
- Sources give conflicting indications of construction date: one tradition dates the temple to shortly after Po Rome's death in 1651, while a separately dated surviving relief fragment is attributed to the 14th-16th century, suggesting either an earlier structure at the site or a dating uncertainty in the source material; this entry does not resolve the discrepancy.
- As with the separately documented Po Klong Garai Temple, this is a deified-king cult site central to traditional Cham religious practice rather than a temple to a conventionally named pan-Indian Hindu deity in the ordinary sense; classified here as partially_active reflecting its dual character as both a heritage monument and a continuing site of Cham ritual veneration.