A ceremony to celebrate the Trang An tourism Complex as a world cultural and natural Heritage site will be held on January 22-24, said Tran Huu Binh, Vice Chairman of the People’s Committee of northern Ninh Binh province.

Covering an area of more than 6,100 hectares, Trang An consists of three conjunctional sites: the Hoa Lu ancient citadel, Trang An-Tam Coc-Bich Dong natural scenic site, and the Hoa Lu primeval forest. The complex is often called Vietnam's Ha Long Bay on land.

The turbulent movement of earth crust of hundreds of million years ago has endowed Ninh Binh with a unique nature of labyrinth of caves, mountains, lakes, and historical relics. The site boasts 47 historical relics with numerous caves inside stunning limestone karst mountain ranges.

Not only serving as a cradle of civilisation of ancient Vietnamese, Trang An also used to house the first capital of the Vietnamese feudal and independent state, Hoa Lu, more than 1,000 years ago. Its rugged landscape provided a favourable location for a secure and easily defended citadel.

Moreover, Trang An owns diverse ecological system. It is surrounded by primary forests with variety of floral and fauna systems including 310 types of tracheophyta, many kinds of fungi, moss and algae, some rare trees like Dalbergia tonkinensis, Chukrasia tabularis, Burretiodendron hsienmu, over 30 animals, 50 types of birds, reptiles, especially rare animals like Capricornis sumatraensis, Neofelis nebulosa, white chest gibbon, Buceros bicornis.

In the Government’s northern coastal region development plan, Ninh Binh is oriented to become the country’s tourism centre featuring a natural conservation zone, a national park, a world biosphere reserve and a tourism area.

Chairman of the Central Council for Theory and Criticism on Literature and Arts Nguyen Hong Vinh suggested the locality combine the maintenance, conservation and promotion of the heritage site with the protection of natural resources and ecological environment.

He stressed the necessity for the province to follow and take full advantage of the Law on Cultural Heritage and other related laws to serve protection works.

Therefore, in the time to come, five localities housing the Trang An complex, namely Gia Vien, Hoa Lu, Nho Quan, Tam Diep and Ninh Binh city, will intensify management over tourism activities, and encourage locals’ involvement in protecting and conserving the heritage, while upgrading infrastructure facilities in the site.

In the four-day New Year holiday, the province welcomed around 60,000 tourists to the site, up 12 percent against the same period last year, according to Lam Quang Nghia, Director of the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.-VNA