A humble fountain in the middle of Nam Phou Place marks the heart of downtown Vientiane, where you'll find the greatest concentration of accommodation, restaurants and shops catering to visitors. North of Nam Phou, on Samsenthai Road, the Lao Revolutionary Museum (opening hours variable; 700K) deals primarily with the events, both ancient and recent, that led to the "inevitable victory" of the proletariat in 1975. Inside, scenes portray Lao patriots liberating the motherland from Thai and Burmese feudalists and French colonialists bullwhipping villagers. Black-and-white photographs tell the story of the struggle against "the Japanese fascists" and "American imperialists".

Towards the eastern end of Setthathilat Road, the attractive street that runs parallel to and just south of Samsenthai Road, stands Wat Sisaket (daily except Mon & public holidays 8am-noon & 1-4pm; 1000K), the oldest wat in Vientiane. Constructed by King Anouvong (Chao Anou) in 1818, it was the only monastery to survive the Siamese sacking ten years later. Surrounded by a tile-roofed cloister, the sim (building housing the main Buddha image) contains some charming, though badly deteriorating, murals. A splendidly ornate candle holder of carved wood situated before the altar is a fine example of nineteenth-century Lao woodcarving. Outside, the cloister holds countless niches from which peer diminutive Buddhas.

Opposite Wat Sisaket stands the Presidential Palace , an impressive French Beaux Arts-style building, built to house the French colonial governor, and nowadays used mainly for government ceremonies. Just west of the palace, the Haw Pha Kaew (daily except Mon & public holidays 8am-noon & 1-4pm; 1000K), once the king's personal Buddhist temple, now functions as a museum of art and antiquities . The temple is named for the Emerald Buddha, or Pha Kaew, which was pilfered by the Siamese in 1779 and carried off to their capital, where it remains today . The museum houses the finest collection of Lao art in the country, one of the most striking works being a Buddha in the "Calling for Rain" pose (standing with arms to the sides and fingers pointing to the ground) and sporting a jewel-encrusted navel. Also of note are a pair of eighteenth-century terracotta apsara, or celestial dancers, and a highly detailed "naga throne " from Xiang Khouang that once served as a pedestal for a Buddha image. Sheltered under an adjacent pavilion is a rather poor-quality sample stone urn from the Plain of Jars.

It has been said that, along with coffee and baguettes, the Lao inherited a taste for pompous town-planning from the French. Seedy Lane Xang Avenue , leading off north from Setthathilat Road, was to be Vientiane's Champs Elysées and Patouxai its Arc de Triomphe. Popularly known as anusawali (Lao for "monument"), this massive ferro-concrete Arch of Victory (8am-6pm daily; 500K; 300K to park your bike), 1km from the Presidential Palace, was built in the late 1950s to commemorate casualties of war on the side of the Royal Lao Government. Said to have been completed with concrete donated by the US government for the construction of an airport, the structure has been jokingly referred to as "the vertical runway". The view of Vientiane from the top is worth the climb. A handful of hawkers are sheltered by a ceiling adorned with reliefs of the Hindu deities; the walls depict characters from the Ramayana, the epic Hindu story of battles between good and evil.

One and a half kilometres east of Patouxai stands the Buddhist stupa, That Louang , Laos's most important religious building and its national symbol (daily except Mon & public holidays 8am-noon & 1-4pm; 1000K). The original That Louang is thought to have been built in the mid-sixteenth century by King Setthathilat, whose statue stands in front, and was reported to have looked like a gold-covered "pyramid". Today's structure dates from the 1930s: the tapering golden spire of the main stupa is 45m tall and rests on a plinth of stylized lotus petals; it's surrounded on all sides by thirty short, spiky stupas. Within the cloisters are kept a collection of very worn Buddha images, some of which may have been enshrined in the original Khmer temple that once occupied the site.