Hanoi travel guide

Top 10 sights in Hanoi

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Grenouille vert · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Imperial Citadel of Thang Long

   The seat of Vietnamese power for thirteen centuries, from the Ly dynasty onwards, and World Heritage since 2010. Excavation has exposed foundations layer on layer, and a concrete bunker in the grounds served as the North Vietnamese command post.

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2. 

   2© NKSTTSSHNVN · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

   A granite mausoleum on Ba Dinh Square, opened in 1975 and modelled on Lenin's, holding the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh — who had asked to be cremated. Dress and behaviour rules are enforced, and the body goes to Russia for maintenance.

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3. 

   3© The original uploader was Chuoibk at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Temple of Literature

   A Confucian temple founded in 1070 which became Vietnam's first university six years later. Eighty-two stone stelae on the backs of turtles list the men who passed its doctoral examinations, and are on the UNESCO documentary heritage register.

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   Presidential Palace of Vietnam

   The palace built between 1900 and 1906 for the French governor-general of Indochina, in mustard-yellow Italian Renaissance style. Ho Chi Minh refused to live in it and used a wooden stilt house in the garden instead.

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   5

   Hỏa Lò Prison

   A prison the French built in the 1890s for Vietnamese political prisoners, and which North Vietnam later used for captured American pilots, who called it the Hanoi Hilton. Part of the building survives as a museum, guillotine included.

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6. 

   6© Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0

   Ba Ðình Square

   The square where Ho Chi Minh read the declaration of independence on 2 September 1945, and where the mausoleum now stands. Military parades are held on it, and the lawn is divided into two hundred and forty squares of grass.

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7. 

   7© Clay Gilliland · CC BY-SA 2.0

   One Pillar Pagoda

   The One Pillar Pagoda is a wooden hall raised on a single column like a lotus on its stem. The legend of the Lý dynasty attaches to it, and it is one of the emblems of Hanoi.

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8. 

   8© Smuconlaw. · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts

   The national art museum, in a former French colonial boarding school for the daughters of officials. It runs from Dong Son bronzes and Buddhist woodcarving through the lacquer and silk painting of the French period to socialist realism, in that order and in one building.

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9. 

   9© Aaron from san francisco, United States · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Ho Chi Minh Museum

   Built in the 1990s beside the mausoleum, in the shape of a white lotus. The displays are less biography than allegory — surrealist tableaux of the revolution, a Ford car bursting through a wall — which makes it the strangest state museum in Vietnam.

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10. 

    10© ZiYouXunLu · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Co Loa Citadel

    A fortified city north of Hanoi built in the third century BC as the capital of Au Lac, with three concentric earth ramparts still traceable in the fields. It is the oldest known citadel in Vietnam and carries a founding legend of a magic crossbow.

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Popular tickets & tours in Hanoi

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Based on 2025 Wikipedia pageviews — popular places beyond the top 10.

1. 

   1© John Ragai · CC BY 2.0

   Saint Joseph Cathedral

   Saint Joseph's Cathedral is a neo-Gothic church modelled on Notre-Dame, and it doubles as the landmark you navigate the Old Quarter by. The lane of lemon-tea stalls out front is where young Hanoi gathers.

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2. 

   2© Thang Nguyen · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Trấn Quốc Pagoda

   Trấn Quốc Pagoda is the oldest temple in Hanoi, standing on the shore of West Lake. Its red lotus tower catching the sunset is its finest moment.

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   Turtle Tower

   A small tower of 1886 on an islet in Hoan Kiem lake, in the middle of the city. It has become the emblem of Hanoi, and the lake's story of a returned sword and a giant turtle attaches to it.

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4. 

   4© The Hanoian · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Vietnam Military History Museum

   The army's museum, founded in 1956 and moved in late 2024 to a large new building west of the city. Captured American aircraft, tanks and the wreckage of a B-52 stand in the yard.

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5. 

   5© Nam Hy Hoàng Phong · CC BY 3.0

   Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

   A museum of Vietnam's fifty-four recognised ethnic groups, with houses from each rebuilt full-size in the grounds — a Tay stilt house, a Bahnar communal hall, a Gia Rai tomb with its carvings. It is the most rewarding museum in Hanoi.

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6. 

   6© Nguyễn Thanh Quang · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Quán Thánh Temple

   A Taoist temple by the West Lake, founded in the eleventh century and dedicated to Tran Vu, guardian of the north. Its bronze statue of the god, nearly four metres and four tonnes, was cast in 1677.

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   National Museum of Vietnamese History

   The national history museum, in Ernest Hébrard's Indochinese-style building of 1932 — French construction under a Vietnamese roof, the style he invented here. The collection runs from prehistory through the Dong Son drums and the Champa sculpture to the nineteenth century.

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8. 

   8© Chinasaur · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Flag Tower of Hanoi

   A brick flag tower of 1812, thirty-three metres high, and one of the few parts of the Nguyen citadel the French did not demolish. It stands in the grounds of the military museum and can be climbed for the view.

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9. 

   9© joxeankoret · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Presidential Palace Historical Site

   The compound behind the mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh lived and worked from 1954 until his death in 1969 — the stilt house he preferred to the palace, the fish pond he fed, his desk and his car.

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    Palais d'Expositions

    An exhibition hall built for the Hanoi exposition of 1902, when the city became the capital of French Indochina, with a dome and a facade of cast iron. It was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.

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