Hà Nội

Hanoi St. Joseph's Cathedral is a neo-Gothic French colonial church built in 1886 at the heart of the Old Quarter - one of the oldest Western-style buildings in Vietnam and a defining landmark of central Hanoi.

Hanoi's Old Quarter is a dense 36-street merchant district dating to the 13th century where each street historically traded a single craft - today it remains the commercial and cultural heart of the capital, with narrow lanes, ancient tube houses, street food, and the best urban walking in Vietnam.

Hanoi Train Street is a narrow residential alley in the Old Quarter where a working railway line passes within centimetres of the houses, cafes, and daily life of the people who live alongside it - one of Hanoi's most photographed and contested urban scenes.

Hoan Kiem Lake is the symbolic heart of Hanoi - a scenic urban lake in the Old Quarter surrounded by shaded walkways, French colonial buildings, and the legendary Ngoc Son Temple, home to Vietnam's founding myth of the restored sword.

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square contains the preserved body of Vietnam's founding leader, alongside his former residence, presidential palace, and museum - the most significant political pilgrimage site in Vietnam.

Hoa Lo Prison — nicknamed the 'Hanoi Hilton' by American POWs — is a preserved French colonial prison in central Hanoi, used to incarcerate Vietnamese political prisoners before 1954 and American pilots during the Vietnam War. One of Hanoi's most historically significant sites.

Ngoc Son Temple is a 19th-century Taoist and Buddhist temple on a small island in Hoan Kiem Lake, reached via the iconic red Huc Bridge and housing a preserved specimen of the giant soft-shell turtle central to Hanoi's founding legend.

The One Pillar Pagoda is one of Vietnam's most iconic structures - an 11th-century lotus-shaped Buddhist shrine rising from a square pond in central Hanoi, built by Emperor Lý Thái Tông and regarded as a symbol of the Vietnamese capital.

Ta Hien Street is Hanoi's most famous nightlife street in the Old Quarter - a narrow lane packed with bia hơi (fresh draft beer) stalls, street food vendors, and bars where locals and travellers share plastic stools on the pavement every evening.

Tây Phương Pagoda sits on a low hill 40km west of Hanoi and contains 74 remarkable wooden Buddhist statues from the 18th century - some of the finest examples of traditional Vietnamese sculpture, carved with an expressiveness that sets them apart from anything else in the country.

The Temple of Literature in Hanoi is Vietnam's best-preserved example of traditional Vietnamese architecture - a Confucian temple complex built in 1070 that served as the country's first university for over 700 years, with five courtyards of pavilions, ponds, and stone steles recording the names of doctoral graduates.

Tran Quoc Pagoda is Hanoi's oldest Buddhist pagoda, dating to the 6th century AD and situated on a small peninsula in West Lake - its 11-tier pink stupa rising above the water is one of the most recognised images in Vietnamese Buddhism.