Vientiane is probably the most laid-back capital in Southeast Asia, and that is a big part of its charm. On the banks of the Mekong, facing Thailand, the capital of Laos has none of the bustle or skyscrapers of Bangkok or Hanoi: here golden temples sit alongside tree-lined boulevards with a French feel, cafés alongside stupas, and the worst traffic jam is usually a row of motorbikes waiting at a red light. It is a city to take slowly, ideal for starting or ending a trip through Laos without stress.
Behind its calm, Vientiane holds the country's great symbols: the golden stupa of Pha That Luang, the national monument of Laos; the Patuxai arch, a very particular Lao take on the Arc de Triomphe; venerable temples such as Wat Si Saket and Haw Phra Kaew; and, on the outskirts, the surreal Buddha Park, scattered with Buddhist and Hindu sculptures. The capital also offers one of the best food mixes in Laos, drawing on both Lao and French cooking, and memorable sunsets over the Mekong. This guide lays out the visit with a practical eye: how many days to spend, which monuments and temples you shouldn't miss, how to get there —including the new high-speed train and the crossing from Thailand—, what admission and transport cost, and where to eat and sleep. Without the pressure of the big capitals, Vientiane invites you to slow down, stroll along the river and discover, at your own pace, the urban yet provincial face of Laos.
It is also a place to understand the country as a whole: here you will find its institutions, its recent memory —the moving COPE centre tells the story of the bomb victims— and the pulse of a Laos that is modernising without entirely losing its trademark slowness. A small capital with a lot to tell.
Vientiane has more than a thousand years of history. An ancient settlement on the banks of the Mekong, it rose to prominence when King Setthathirath moved the capital of the Lan Xang kingdom there in 1560, escaping Burmese pressure, and had its great monuments built, such as Pha That Luang and Haw Phra Kaew, the latter to house the Emerald Buddha. After Lan Xang broke apart, it was the capital of its own kingdom, until in 1827-1828 the Siamese army sacked it and razed it almost entirely as punishment for King Anouvong's rebellion, leaving it in ruins for decades. The French protectorate, in the late 19th century, rebuilt it and made it the administrative capital of Laos, giving it its colonial look. It was the capital of the independent kingdom and, since 1975, of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Its full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The quiet capital on the banks of the Mekong, home to the great golden stupa of Pha That Luang, a national symbol, alongside Vang Vieng and its spectacular karst mountains, a valley that was a Secret War battleground and is now a mecca for adventure.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The name Vientiane already holds a fragrance. In Lao, the city is called Viang Chan, usually translated as 'city of sandalwood' (or, by other readings, 'city of the moon'), and it was this form, adapted by the French as 'Vientiane', that became universal. Under any name, the capital of Laos was born of the same thing that sustains it today: the great Mekong River, whose wide, lazy bend also marks the border with Thailand here.
The area has been inhabited since ancient times. Before it was a Lao capital, there were settlements linked to the Mon and Khmer world in the Mekong valley, and tradition credits the city's founding to legendary kings and princes. What is certain is that, from very early on, this stretch of the river was a strategic place: fertile land, a natural crossing and a meeting point of river and overland routes. On that foundation, little by little, a centre of power grew, one that history would raise to the greatest heights and also bring to the most complete ruin.
For centuries, Vientiane was one of several 'city-states' (muang) of the Lao world, alongside Luang Prabang and others, caught up in the region's web of alliances and rivalries. Its great moment came in the 16th century, when it stopped being merely an important city and became the political heart of an entire kingdom: the powerful Lan Xang, 'the land of a million elephants'. That rise is tied to one particular king and to a decision that changed the city's destiny forever.
In 1560, King Setthathirath, one of the great monarchs of Lan Xang, made a momentous decision: to move the kingdom's capital from Luang Prabang, in the north, to Vientiane, further south and more central. The reason was above all defensive. Burma had become an aggressive, expanding power, and Luang Prabang was dangerously exposed; Vientiane, beside the Mekong and better placed, offered a safer position that was better connected to the rest of the kingdom.
Setthathirath did not simply move the court: he gave his new capital the monuments that still define it today. He had the Pha That Luang built, the great golden stupa that would become the national symbol of Laos, and he built the Haw Phra Kaew to house the Emerald Buddha (Phra Kaew), the most sacred and revered image in the region, which he had brought with him. Under his reign, Vientiane flourished as a religious and political capital, with temples, palaces and walls, in what was perhaps Lan Xang's most splendid period.
That splendour, however, did not last. After Setthathirath's disappearance and, later, the death of King Sourigna Vongsa in the early 18th century with no clear successor, the kingdom of Lan Xang split into three rival kingdoms: Luang Prabang, Champasak and Vientiane. Divided and weakened, these kingdoms were increasingly at the mercy of their powerful neighbours, above all the Siamese kingdom (present-day Thailand), which gradually extended its rule over the whole Lao world. Vientiane survived as the capital of a tributary kingdom, proud but fragile, in a balance that would end up breaking in the most violent way.
The most tragic episode in Vientiane's history broke out in the early 19th century, when the kingdom was already a vassal of Siam. In 1826, King Anouvong (Chao Anou) of Vientiane, humiliated by Siamese control, rebelled and launched a military campaign against Siam in the hope of freeing his people. The revolt failed spectacularly. The Siamese army not only defeated Anouvong but decided to teach a definitive lesson: in 1827-1828, Siamese troops sacked Vientiane and razed it almost completely.
The destruction was almost total. Temples, palaces and homes were burned and demolished; the population was massacred or deported en masse to Siamese territory, a common practice at the time to weaken the enemy and repopulate one's own lands. King Anouvong was captured and died a prisoner in Bangkok, where he is remembered very differently from the way he is revered in Laos, which considers him a hero of national resistance. The Emerald Buddha, which had already been taken to Siam earlier, remained in Bangkok for good, where it still is today, a subject that remains sensitive.
For decades, Vientiane practically ceased to exist as a city. The old capital was reduced to ruins covered by jungle, deserted and forgotten, barely a memory of its former splendour. The Pha That Luang, looted and damaged, decayed among the undergrowth. That emptiness lasted until, at the end of the 19th century, a new power appeared on the scene and decided to bring the city back to life for its own purposes: France.
At the end of the 19th century, at the height of colonial expansion, France extended its rule over the Lao territories and folded them into its Indochina, wresting them from the Siamese sphere. The French needed an administrative centre for the new colonial Laos, and they chose to rebuild Vientiane on the ruins of the old capital. And so the city razed by Siam was reborn, this time with a European face: tree-lined boulevards, administrative buildings, colonial villas, churches and the orderly layout that still gives it its particular feel today.
Under the protectorate, Vientiane became the administrative capital of Laos (while Luang Prabang kept its status as royal capital and its monarchy). The French restored some monuments, including the Pha That Luang itself, and layered their culture over the Lao one: from that era come the baguette, the coffee, the shuttered architecture and the French-style urban planning that make Vientiane such a different capital from others in Southeast Asia. It was, mind you, a peripheral and underdeveloped colony within French Indochina, which was far more focused on Vietnam.
The 20th century brought the usual upheavals: the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, the rise of independence movements and the formal independence of Laos, recognised by France in 1953. But peace did not come with independence. The country was caught up in the Cold War and in the orbit of the Vietnam War, and although the heavy bombing of the 'secret war' was concentrated in the east and northeast, Vientiane was the political stage where the intrigues, coups and negotiations played out between the neutralist, right-wing and communist factions fighting over the future of Laos.
In 1975, after the fall of Saigon and Phnom Penh, the communist Pathet Lao movement took power across Laos. The monarchy was abolished, the Lao People's Democratic Republic was proclaimed and Vientiane was confirmed as capital of the new socialist state, the only status it had yet to take on in its long history. The first years were hard: a planned economy, isolation, the flight of part of the population — many crossed the Mekong into Thailand — and a grey life under the new regime, aligned with Vietnam and the socialist bloc.
The turning point came from the late 1980s and into the 1990s, when Laos, following its neighbours' example, began a cautious opening of its economy and to the outside world. Vientiane slowly started to modernise, to receive tourists and investment, and to recover some of its everyday life. Monuments were restored, the cafés reopened, and the capital gradually found a balance between its Buddhist heritage, its colonial past and its present as a developing country governed by a single party.
In recent decades the transformation has sped up, driven above all by China's growing influence. The opening, at the end of 2021, of the Laos-China railway, which links Vientiane with Kunming across the country, has made the capital the southern terminus of a strategic corridor that promises to integrate Laos into the regional economy, with all its opportunities and its risks of dependence. Today, Vientiane is still a small, easy-going capital by Asian standards, but also a city on the move: new buildings, growing traffic and ambitious projects. Anyone who explores it finds, within a few kilometres, the layers of an extraordinary history: the golden stupa of a 16th-century king, the scars of the Siamese destruction, the French boulevards, the memory of the bombs at the COPE centre and the pulse of a Laos looking to the future with hope and caution.
