Vietnam Struggles to Save Its Cultural Treasure : History: International appeals to help restore royal citadel have fallen on deaf ears. Country has little money itself to make much headway on project.

Tall grass sways on the sites of palaces where emperors held court and made love to concubines. Termites gnaw pillars that supported temples where the emperors prayed. Protective moats are choked with weeds.

Vietnam’s melancholy royal capital awaits restoration from the ravages of war, typhoons, thieves and voracious tropical insects. Its immediate prospects do not seem bright.

A global campaign to save what may be the country’s greatest cultural treasure has foundered. The Vietnamese have been left to accomplish a multimillion-dollar task on a shoestring, with limited technical capacity.

The international appeal launched by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1981 fell on deaf ears, in part because Vietnam had invaded Cambodia three years earlier.

Member governments did not donate a penny, and private donors gave only $2,000. UNESCO itself has provided $100,000, and a Japanese foundation gave the same amount recently to restore the Ngo Mon Gate, the major entrance to the imperial citadel where Bao Dai, the last emperor, abdicated in 1945.

Thirteen kings of the Nguyen dynasty, beginning in 1802, lived in a walled, moated citadel that covers 2 square miles. Within it, they built the Imperial City and the Forbidden Purple City, the symbolic heart of the kingdom, reserved for the immediate Royal Family, its servants and concubines.

The citadel and elaborate imperial tombs on the south bank of the Perfume River were heavily damaged during the war against French colonial power. Later, some of the bloodiest fighting of the Vietnam War occurred at the citadel during the communist Tet offensive of 1968.

Weather and thieves are constant foes.

Severe storms in 1985 and 1990 ripped off tiled roofs, exposing palaces and temples to damage by rain. Thieves have stolen artifacts and drilled into the tombs in search of gold.

“Every year we improve about 15 monuments, and every year the dozens of others in Hue deteriorate further,” said Phan Tien Dung, deputy director of the Hue Cultural and Historic Monument Preservation Office.

The central government is devoting more resources to preservation, but Dung said it was not enough to sustain current work on 14 major monuments, wall restoration, pond dredging and repair of roads in the citadel.

Muhammad Ishtiaq Khan, director of UNESCO cultural programs in Asia, said the agency is short of cash and member governments have not been generous in contributing to its 23 other restoration projects.

“We don’t see that the climate will improve for Hue or anywhere else,” he said.

One hope is that some of the money from increasing tourism can be spent on restoration.

About 90,000 tourists visited Hue in 1991, one-third of them foreigners, said Nguyen Thanh Dan, director of the provincial tourism office. More hotels are planned, and Hue will be linked by air this year to Bangkok, a transport hub for Southeast Asia.

Those who knew Hue in better times will probably be disappointed even if the imperial citadel is resurrected.

Gone are the patrician families and refined atmosphere of a place the Vietnamese feel had the best food, finest artists and most beautiful women in the land.

Cheap concrete buildings, representing the Soviet pillbox school of architecture, have sprouted among French colonial villas and old pagodas.