Before its partial destruction in the fire that blazed through the town in 1887, and prior to its restoration by King Sakharine Khamsouk in 1898, Vat Vixun was one of the most imposing monasteries of the old royal town. Built between 1512 and 1515, during the reign of King Vixun Harath, legend has it that no less than 4,000 trees were used for its construction. 12 pillars each 30 meters high and 1.30 meters in diameter, supported its roof, each and and every one procured from a different forest.

Vat Vixun is in the style featuring a peripheral nave and lean-to porch in front. The central four-sided roof features a central spike with seventeen prasat and three-headed naga. Displayed inside the viharn is one of the biggest Buddha statues in stucco and gilded masonry in Luang Prabang. A most beautiful collection of stelai statues and ancient objects, especially XIth and XIIth century Khmer pieces which can be viewed today at the National Museum; was to be found at the Vat Vixun between 1942 and 1975; when it was the museum of religious arts.

The surrounding walls of Vat Vixun are punctuated by four gates in the form of three-tiered prasat and crowned with a bowl of lotus flowers. On the temple grounds stands a square monument surmounted by a semi-spherical dome - That Pathoum, the ‘Stupa of the Great Lotus', better known to the people of Luang Prabang as That Mak Mo, the ‘Watermelon Stupa94. Erected between 1514 and 1515, its semi-spherical form is of such an exceptional type that no other monument of its kind can be found where else in Laos, not even in other Indochina countries.