Bát Tràng Pottery Village

Picture yourself stepping into a line of ca dao, Vietnamese folk verse, you may have heard long ago — “Ước gì anh lấy được nàng / Để anh mua gạch Bát Tràng về xây”, roughly “If only I could marry you, I would buy Bát Tràng bricks to build our home” — and finding that brick still there, in the walls of a village across the Red River, not far from central Hà Nội. Bát Tràng is a pottery village still in production, where each household works as its own independent workshop. In the old hamlet, lanes wind between high walls, so narrow that you press against the wall when a motorbike comes through. The bricks here are fired hard, so the walls carry very little moss.

Bát Tràng Bricks: From a Folk Verse to a Village Still Making Pottery

Legend has it the place was once called Bạch Thổ Phường — “the ward of white earth”. Old chronicles already mention the name of Bát commune in the 14th century, and by the 15th century Bát Tràng was a well-known pottery village: the Dư địa chí, a geography by the scholar Nguyễn Trãi, records that the village had to supply 70 sets of bowls and plates as part of the tribute sent to China’s Ming court. Bát Tràng ceramics from the 15th–16th centuries have been found as far away as Europe, the Middle East, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines. The village đình (communal house), rebuilt in 1720, has a wide courtyard paved with Bát Tràng bricks, and its two side doors carry phrases that almost sum up the craft: “Thổ thành kim” — earth becomes gold — and “Nê tác bảo” — mud makes treasure.

Have you ever wondered where the brick in that verse came from? Villagers say it began as the protective casing stacked around pottery inside the kiln, fired again and again until it turned dense and hard, and only then was used to pave floors and build houses. Today the village fires its pottery in gas and electric kilns; wood-burning kilns belong to the past. But the past left marks: the lane walls still show black stains from the “coal cakes” once slapped onto them to dry — the coal was peeled away, the stains stayed. In hamlet 3 stands the last remaining bầu kiln, a chambered kiln named “Lò sông Hồng B”, its five vaulted chambers joined together like pieces of a seashell. It no longer fires, and is kept for visitors to see.

So what does heritage mean here today? Pottery-making has been national intangible cultural heritage since 2019; the village festival was recognised as national heritage at the end of 2024; the knowledge of preparing the traditional feast (cỗ) became national heritage in 2025. In 2025 the village received the World Crafts Council's title of World Craft Village for pottery. In hamlet 5, the Bát Tràng Pottery Centre rises as seven spiralling volumes that recall a potter’s wheel, while its interior recalls the bầu kiln — the work of architect Hoàng Thúc Hào’s team, winner of the Gold Prize at the National Architecture Awards 2022–2023. In 1994, he and his colleagues had drawn up a conservation plan for Bát Tràng titled “Give back to the earth what belongs to the earth”. As for the 17th-century Bát Tràng ceramic long đình (a miniature ceremonial pavilion), a national treasure, it is not in the village but in the Hà Nội Museum. What stays in the village is a craft that is still being practised.

Enough to decide whether to go

What it is

A working pottery village; each household is its own workshop

Where

Bát Tràng commune, Hà Nội — across the Red River, not far from the centre

Earliest written trace

Old chronicles mention Bát commune in the 14th century

National heritage

Pottery-making (2019) · village festival (2024) · feast-cooking knowledge (2025)

Most worth seeing

Old-hamlet lanes, Bát Tràng communal house, the last bầu kiln in hamlet 3, Bát Tràng Pottery Centre

Fees

Wander the village and pottery market freely; a few spots inside sell tickets