Báo Quốc has been renamed so many times that its history is partly a history of Vietnamese naming conventions. Thích Giác Phong called it Hàm Long Sơn Thiên Thọ Tự when he founded it — a name that referenced the hill it sits on, Hàm Long (Dragon's Jaw). In 1747, the Nguyễn lord Nguyễn Phúc Khoát gave the temple an imperial plaque inscribed with the name Sắc Tứ Báo Quốc Tự. When Emperor Gia Long's wife, Empress Hiếu Khương, patronized a major reconstruction in 1808 — commissioning a triple gate, a large bell, and a gong — the temple's name changed again to Chùa Thiên Thọ. Then in 1824, Emperor Minh Mạng came to visit and restored the name Báo Quốc, the one that has stuck. Six years later, in 1830, Minh Mạng held his own 40th birthday celebration here. For a brief moment, this hillside monastery became the ceremonial center of the Nguyễn court.

The temple occupies two hectares on Hàm Long hill, entered through a triple gate — the tam quan — that frames a spacious courtyard filled with plant life. On the left as you enter, a row of stupas honors Buddhist patriarchs; the oldest, dedicated to the temple's founder Thích Giác Phong, was built in 1714 and stands 3.30 meters tall. The main temple building rests on four pillars with dragon figures carved onto them. Inside, the largest statue is a triple representation of the Buddha flanked by two sets of Mahayana sutras. In front of this statue, a small stupa holds relics believed to be those of Gautama Buddha himself. Another altar presents the Buddha attended by Ananda and Mahakassapa — his personal attendant and the first patriarch of Buddhism after his death. A third altar houses a copy of the Lotus Sutra, with a ceremonial bell and a wooden fish gong standing on either side. The spring that flows from the hilltop runs through the grounds, giving the place a sound track of moving water beneath the incense smoke.

In the 1930s, Báo Quốc became a center of something larger than a single temple's renewal: a revival of Buddhist education across Vietnam. A school for teaching Buddhism opened here in 1935. In 1940, the temple added a monastery for training monks — an institution that has operated continuously ever since, which means it survived the French war, survived the American war, survived reunification, survived the decades of state suspicion toward organized religion. By 1957, the monk Thích Trí Thủ, who would become one of the most influential Buddhist leaders in twentieth-century Vietnam, oversaw a major phase of reconstruction. Within the temple grounds, the Ham Long Primary School opened in 1959, eventually expanding to secondary education in the early 1960s. The school was renamed Trường Bồ Đề Hàm Long — Ham Long Bodhi School — and operated until 1975, when the change of government brought its closure. The monastery, however, continued.

Báo Quốc sits in a part of Huế that most tourists do not reach on their first visit. The city's main draws — the Imperial Citadel, the royal tombs, the Thiên Mụ Pagoda upstream on the Perfume River — pull visitors in other directions. But the temple on Hàm Long hill rewards the detour. Its courtyard is quieter than the major tourist sites, its stupas weathered to a texture that speaks of time rather than renovation. The monk training program established in 1940 means that novice monks are a common presence in the grounds — young men learning the sutras in the same compound where Emperor Minh Mạng once celebrated his birthday. The Perfume River lies a short walk to the north, and the city beyond it. The spring still flows down from the hilltop. The bell Empress Hiếu Khương commissioned in 1808 is long gone, but the act of replacing it — casting metal into devotion — has happened more than once in this place's long history.