The French Quarter and a rainy-day museum walk

Wide tree-lined boulevards, a neo-Gothic cathedral, an opera house modelled on Paris and three thoughtful museums: the perfect plan for a wet Hanoi day.

Area

Old Quarter & Hoan Kiem

Start from

Hoan Kiem Lake

Distance

about 4 km on foot

Time needed

1 day

Best season

All year; ideal on rainy or very hot days

Difficulty

Easy

Transport

On foot; Grab for longer hops

Tickets & rules

Entry tickets for Hoa Lo and the Women’s Museum; modest dress at the cathedral

Why go

South and east of the lake the city changes character. The narrow lanes of the Old Quarter give way to broad avenues shaded by tall trees, yellow-painted villas with green shutters, and grand public buildings from the colonial era. It feels calmer and more spacious, and it is a natural place to go when the rain comes down or the heat is too much for the old streets.

This route mixes architecture with three museums that each tell a different part of Vietnam’s story: the lives of women, the history of a notorious prison, and the country’s art.

Taken slowly, with a long lunch and a café stop, it fills a whole day, much of it under a roof.

The story

The French began laying out this quarter in the late nineteenth century. St Joseph’s Cathedral, finished in 1886, is the oldest landmark: a dark, rain-stained neo-Gothic church loosely modelled on Notre-Dame in Paris. The square in front of it is now lined with cafés, and its lime-tea stalls are a Hanoi institution for young people at night.

The Opera House was completed in 1911, its design inspired by the Palais Garnier in Paris. It still hosts concerts and ballet; seeing a performance is the best way to see the interior. In the evening the building is floodlit and the square in front fills with wedding photographers.

Hoa Lo Prison was built by the French administration in the 1890s to hold Vietnamese political prisoners in harsh conditions. Much of it was demolished in the 1990s for a tower, and the surviving gatehouse and cells are now a museum. Later, during the war, it held captured American pilots, who nicknamed it the Hanoi Hilton. The displays reflect the official Vietnamese perspective, and the cells are sobering.

The Vietnamese Women’s Museum is one of the best in the city: sensitive, well-labelled galleries on marriage, family, work and dress across the country’s ethnic groups, including the street vendors who feed Hanoi. The Fine Arts Museum, in a former colonial boarding school, holds lacquer paintings, silk paintings and wooden sculptures from village communal houses.

Getting there

All the sights are within a forty-minute walk of each other. The cathedral is five minutes west of the lake, the Women’s Museum on Ly Thuong Kiet street, Hoa Lo on Hoa Lo street, and the Opera House at the end of Trang Tien street. The Fine Arts Museum is further west, near the Temple of Literature; take a Grab if it’s raining.

Most museums close for a lunch break and some close on Mondays; check opening hours before you set out.

A suggested plan

1. 8:30Coffee by St Joseph’s Cathedral, then a look inside if it’s open.
2. 9:30The Vietnamese Women’s Museum; allow at least two hours.
3. 12:00Lunch in the quarter, then a walk along Trang Tien street to the Opera House.
4. 14:00Hoa Lo Prison museum.
5. 15:30Fine Arts Museum, or an ice cream on Trang Tien if you’ve had enough.
6. EveningCheck whether there’s a concert at the Opera House.

Where to stay

The streets around the cathedral and south of the lake are a good compromise: walkable to the Old Quarter but leafier and a little calmer, with more mid-range and upmarket hotels.

Good to know

• Trang Tien has an ice-cream parlour that Hanoians have queued at for decades; the green bean flavour is a classic.
• The Women’s Museum often has a good gift shop with fair-trade crafts.
• Bring a compact umbrella; showers can be sudden.
• A good audio guide adds a lot at Hoa Lo.