The marine cultural heritage tour in Central Vietnam

"Heritage from ancient ships" is a unique exhibition at the Quang Ngai General Museum that is attracting thousands of visitors.

Here, thousands of antiquities, documents and images are salvaged and collected from ancient shipwrecks in the central waters such as the ancient ship Cu Lao Cham (Quang Nam province), the ancient ship Binh Chau 1, Binh Chau 2 (Quang Ngai province), Binh Dinh ancient ship (Binh Dinh province), Binh Thuan ancient ship (Binh Thuan province).

Over the past decades, many underwater archeological excavations have been surveyed in the central coast of Vietnam with hundreds of thousands of artifacts found and recovered on many sunken ancient ships.

From 1997 to 2007, about 200,000 artifacts were discovered on the ancient ship Cu Lao Cham, Hoi An city, Quang Nam province. Many ceramics discovered on this shipwreck are completely different from those discovered on other ancient ships in the central sea. Many ceramic products from Chu Dau, Hai Duong (from the Le Dynasty) date back to the mid-15th century.

In Quang Ngai province, the ancient ship Binh Chau 1 dating back to the 17^th century was excavated in 1999 in Vung Tau strait in Chau Tan village, Binh Chau commune, Binh Son district. Also in this area, the ancient ship Binh Chau 2 dating back to the 13^th and 14^th centuries was excavated in 2013 with thousands of ceramic artifacts, unique utensils...

Historical documents and archaeological investigation results show that, along the central region of Vietnam, trading ports existed and developed from the period of Champa culture to Dai Viet. Nowadays, these ancient trading ports still have vestiges, many of which have been developed into modern harbors.

Currently, Quang Ngai Citadel is the only tourist attraction that owns a huge collection of antiques from shipwrecks on Vietnamese waters.

According to Huynh Thi Phuong Hoa - Director of Quang Ngai Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, visitors will have interesting experiences and discover the unique values of marine cultural heritage in Quang Ngai province.

“This is a huge cultural value, promising to be an interesting tourism product that brings a lot of knowledge and values about Quang Ngai culture as well as cultural values in the field of underwater archeology for tourists as well as researchers", Hoa stressed.

Minh Thien