Kazik Hoi An: the Polish architect behind the statue on Tran Phu Street

Walk down Tran Phu Street and you will pass a block of stone carved with a bearded face, usually with incense and fresh flowers at its feet. Guides often sum him up as “the foreigner who saved Hoi An”. For Kazik Hoi An, that line is only half right. We went back to Vietnamese press reports, UNESCO’s own files and Polish heritage sources to tell the story properly, then added the practical bits you need to find the statue.

Who was Kazik? Kazimierz Kwiatkowski in brief

Kazimierz Kwiatkowski was born on 2 July 1944 in the village of Pachole, in Poland’s Lublin region. He trained as an architect and worked for PKZ, the Polish state conservation workshops founded in 1950 to rebuild monuments destroyed in the Second World War. That background mattered: PKZ specialists were used to rescuing ruins with scientific methods.

According to Poland’s Polonika institute, when Vietnam asked for international help to save the Cham temples of My Son after the war, Poland answered. From 1981 Kwiatkowski led the Polish–Vietnamese conservation mission there and kept coming back to Vietnam for roughly 16 years.

He died in Hue on 19 March 1997 while working on the Polish-funded restoration of The To Mieu, the dynastic temple inside the Imperial City. It was his last project in Vietnam.

Hoi An residents gave him several nicknames. The best known, “Thay Lang” (the Quack, or folk healer), came from a Polish film: Culture.pl notes that after Znachor was screened in Vietnam, people noticed how much the long-haired, heavily bearded Kwiatkowski resembled its lead actor, Jerzy Bińczycki.

Kazik Hoi An: from My Son to the wooden shophouses

According to Vietnam’s Bao Van Hoa newspaper, Kazik first came to Hoi An in June 1982, while heading the My Son restoration cooperation; some sources date his first contact to 1981. The town was poor and many old houses were in bad shape. Polonika writes that he persuaded local officials to drop plans to demolish original buildings in the historic centre.

Crucially, he did not work alone. On his days off he joined staff from Hoi An’s culture office, the provincial culture service of Quang Nam–Da Nang and Vietnam’s Central Monument Restoration Centre to prepare the eight-part dossier needed for national heritage status. At his suggestion, architect Hoang Dao Kinh, then the centre’s director, brought dozens of architects to Hoi An in two survey rounds, September–November 1983 and April–June 1984, measuring houses by day and drawing plans at night.

The result: in 1985 Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture listed Hoi An Old Town as a national monument, the first legal protection for the town, well over a decade before UNESCO.

His method was “archaeological” restoration: keep as much original fabric as possible and intervene only to stabilise it. Bao Van Hoa reports he once flew back to Poland just to bring conservation chemicals. He also foresaw the tourism boom and, as the paper recalls, told locals Hoi An would become a hen laying golden eggs for its people.

He saw the value of these houses when they were still falling apart, and that is what Hoi An remembers him for.

What he did, and what gets exaggerated

Plenty of travel sites about Kazik Hoi An say he “got Hoi An onto the UNESCO list”. Checked against UNESCO’s records, that needs care:

• Kazik died on 19 March 1997. Vietnam’s nomination file for Hoi An is dated 28 July 1998, more than a year later.
• UNESCO inscribed Hoi An Ancient Town on 4 December 1999 under criteria (ii) and (v). He never saw it.
• The file was the work of many Vietnamese institutions and people. Researcher Truong Nguyen Nga has argued that the first credit for reviving Hoi An’s reputation goes to Professor Hoang Dao Kinh.
• Most old houses are homes. Hoi An’s heritage management centre notes that over 90% of monuments in the Old Town are privately or collectively owned, so keeping the town intact has been the work of families over decades.

None of this shrinks his role. Bao Van Hoa describes him as the first to recognise the town’s special value, and Hoi An’s leaders regularly credit his guidance on restoration. The fair version: Kazik opened the door, argued the case and set the method; saving the town and taking it to UNESCO was a shared effort by experts, officials and residents.

Kazik Hoi An today: the statue and Kazik Park

In 2007 the town built a small park inside the Old Town and placed a monument to Kazik there, according to Bao Van Hoa. The address is 138 Tran Phu Street, formerly Minh An ward and, since the 1 July 2025 administrative merger, Hoi An ward of Da Nang City.

The monument is a sandstone block about 2.5 metres tall including its base, carved by sculptor Pham Hong. A relief bust shows Kazik with long hair and a full beard, as he looked when he arrived in Vietnam. Polonika points out that the head sits against a slightly hollowed, shell-like surface, while the stacked blocks along the edge echo the vaults of Cham towers at My Son.

Polonika also describes two plaques: a small name plate with his dates, 1944–1997, and a larger bilingual Vietnamese–English inscription on the base expressing the gratitude of Hoi An’s Party committee, authorities and people to their friend Kazik.

Every year, a few days before the 19 March anniversary, Hoi An holds a memorial ceremony in the park, usually attended by the Polish embassy. In March 2026 the 29th anniversary was marked with Poland’s honorary consul, Piotr Frieske. Outside the ceremony, Kazik Park also hosts city street performances, such as the shows on 30 and 31 December ahead of New Year 2025.

How to visit: finding it, fees, parking, etiquette

1. Finding itSearch “Kazik Park” or “Cong vien Kazik” on Google Maps. It sits on Tran Phu, the Old Town street that runs parallel to Phan Chau Trinh.
2. FeesThe park is an open-air square with no gate or ticket booth of its own. Old Town fees are now charged per heritage site you enter, at 20,000–30,000 VND per person per site under a Da Nang City Council resolution passed on 11 February 2026; children under 16 and students are exempt.
3. ParkingThe Old Town core has hours when motorbikes are banned, and these change by local notice. The easy option is to park at a lot outside the core and walk in, checking the signs at each street entrance.
4. What to look forRead the bilingual plaques, spot the -sky spelling on the name plate, and look at the stepped stone edge. If you visit My Son later, compare it with the shape of the Cham tower vaults.
5. EtiquetteThis is a memorial, often with incense and flowers. Do not climb the base or put things on the statue, and keep any incense tidy rather than wedging it into the stone.

A practical detail for a long walking day: a stone tablet in the grounds records a public restroom built by Japan’s TAKARA group with students of Da Nang Architecture University, marking 15 years of the Hoi An – Japan cultural exchange festival.

Follow his trail: My Son and Hue

The Kazik Hoi An story is only half told without the two places he gave most of his life to. My Son is about 38 km from Hoi An Old Town via road DT610 and joined the UNESCO list in the same year as Hoi An, 1999. Polish sources mention memorial plaques to him at My Son and in Hue’s Forbidden Purple City; plans for a statue or sculpture garden at My Son have been reported, but we have not been able to confirm their current status.

Read our guides to My Son Sanctuary’s history and architecture and riding to My Son by motorbike. If you would rather not ride, browse My Son tours on GetYourGuide; we do not run tours, so sort by rating rather than price.

Hue is about 132 km from Hoi An. The To Mieu temple inside the Imperial City was the last project Kazik worked on.

FAQ

Đọc bản tiếng Việt: Kazik Hội An: người kiến trúc sư Ba Lan và tượng đài giữa phố cổ.

Main sources: Bao Van Hoa (18 March 2022); UNESCO nomination file 948; Polonika institute (Poland); Culture.pl; Viet Nam News; Hoi An Centre for Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation. Distances to My Son and Hue measured on Google Maps from Hoi An Old Town. Fees can change, so check at a ticket booth before you go. This page contains one affiliate link (GetYourGuide); we may earn a commission if you book through it, at no extra cost to you. See also UNESCO’s Hoi An Ancient Town page and Culture.pl’s profile of Kazimierz Kwiatkowski.