Fountain Square

The central fountain square at the heart of Thakhek is the best-preserved example of French colonial urban planning in central Laos. Surrounded by two-storey colonial shophouses with ground-floor arcades and occupied by a café, a few guesthouses, and small businesses, the square retains much of its original character. The fountain itself is modest but operational, and the square functions as a social gathering point for local residents in the evenings.

Walking the streets around the square gives a sense of Thakhek's character as a working provincial town with an unusually intact historical centre. The morning market one block away operates in the early hours and disappears by 8am. The waterfront promenade along the Mekong, a few minutes' walk, catches the evening breeze and provides views across to Nakhon Phanom in Thailand.

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A story
The fountain at the centre of the square is a characteristic piece of French colonial urban design, placed to create a focal point in the grid of streets that the colonial administration laid out in the early 20th century. Thakhek was a significant administrative centre under the French, and the surviving shophouses around the square — two-storey stucco buildings with arched ground-floor arcades — preserve the colonial-era streetscape more completely than many comparable towns in Laos, largely because the town did not grow fast enough in later decades to demolish them.

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