Presidential Palace, Hanoi

The Presidential Palace of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Phủ Chủ tịch), located in the city of Hanoi, currently is the official residence of the president of Vietnam. Before 1954, it was named the Palace of the Governor-General of Indochina (French: Palais du Gouvernement général de l'Indochine, Vietnamese: Phủ Toàn quyền Đông Dương).

Presidential Palace
Native name Phủ Chủ tịch (Vietnamese)
Location	Ba Đình, Hanoi, Vietnam
Built for	Governor-General of French Indochina
Architect	Auguste Henri Vildieu
Architectural style(s)	French Colonial, Italian Renaissance

History

Residence of the governor-general of French Indochina in Hanoi, Tonkin

The palace was built between 1900 and 1906 to house the French governor-general of Indochina and was constructed by the architect Charles Lichtenfelder, this is often incorrectly attributed to Auguste Henri Vildieu, who was the official French architect for French Indochina. Like most French colonial architecture, the palace is pointedly European. The only visual cues that it is located in Vietnam at all are mango trees growing on the grounds.

The yellow palace stands behind wrought iron gates flanked by sentry boxes. It incorporates elements of Italian Renaissance design, including:

• aedicules
• a formal piano nobile reached by a grand staircase
• broken pediments
• classical columns
• quoins

When Vietnam achieved independence in 1954, Ho Chi Minh was claimed to have refused to live in the grand structure for symbolic reasons, although he still received state guests there; he eventually built a traditional Vietnamese stilt house and carp pond on the grounds. His house and the grounds were made into the Presidential Palace Historical Site in 1975.

The palace hosts government meetings. Although the palace itself is not open to the public, one may walk around the grounds for a fee.

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is located near the palace. On February 27, 2019, Donald Trump officially met Kim Jong-un for the second time in Hanoi's Presidential Palace.

Gallery

• 
  House No. 54, where President Ho Chi Minh lived and worked from 1954 to 1958
• 
  Carp pond on the grounds of the palace
• 
  Presidential Palace
• 
  Dining room of Ho Chi Minh's house attached to the Presidential Palace
• 
  Bedroom of Ho Chi Minh's house attached to the Presidential Palace
• 
  President Ho Chi Minh with children
• 
  Festival in the Governor's palace in 1930
• 
  Welcome ceremony for Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff.

See also

• Tonkin Palace in Hoàn Kiếm District built between 1915 and 1916 to house the governor of Tonkin

Further reading

• Hanoi: Biography of a City by William Stewart Logan