It also contains two large dioramas depicting the Imperial City and flag tower in their heyday.
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This area, enclosed by a low wall, was reserved for residential palaces, living quarters of the state physician and nine ranks of royal concubines, plus kitchens and pleasure pavilions. Many of these buildings were destroyed in the fire, leaving most of the Forbidden Purple City as open ground, a "mood piece", haunted by fragments of wall and overgrown terraces. However, a handful of buildings remain, including the restored Left House and Right House facing each other across a courtyard immediately behind Thai Hoa Palace.
Civil and military mandarins would spruce themselves up here before proceeding to an audience with the monarch. Walking northeast from here you pass behind the Royal Theatre, built in and now belonging to the University of Fine Arts, to find the Thai Binh Reading Pavilion, an appealing, two-tier structure surrounded by bonsai gardens. The pavilion was built by Thieu Tri and then restored by Khai Dinh, who added the kitsch mosaics. This was where the emperor came to listen to music and commune with nature, but at the time of writing it was in a state of disrepair. The other main cluster of sights lies a short walk away in the southwest corner of the Imperial City.
Aligned on a south—north axis, the procession kicks off with Hien Lam Cac "Pavilion of Everlasting Clarity" , a graceful, three-storey structure with some notable woodwork, followed by the Nine Dynastic Urns. Each urn is dedicated to an emperor: the middle urn, which is also the largest at kg, honours Gia Long. Since then, altars have been added for each emperor in turn, except Duc Duc and Hiep Hoa, who reigned only briefly, and Bao Dai who died in exile in ; the three anti-French sovereigns — Ham Nghi, Thanh Thai and Duy Tan — had to wait until after Independence in for theirs.
Take a look inside to see the line of altar tables, most sporting a portrait or photo of the monarch. Behind each is a bed equipped with a sleeping mat, pillows and other accoutrements and, finally, a shrine holding funeral tablets for the emperor and his wife or wives. Exit The Mieu by its west door, beside a year-old pine tree trained in the shape of a flying dragon, and follow the path north into the next compound to find Hung Mieu. This temple is dedicated to the Nguyen ancestors and specifically to the parents of Gia Long, and is distinguished by its fine carving.
A rich tradition of dance and music evolved from popular culture, from the complex rituals of the court and from religious ceremonies. Historically the Perfume River was a place of pleasure where prostitutes cruised in their sampans and artists entertained the gentry with poetry and music. This sounds great, but be warned that the experience can feel somewhat cheap — the fees given to performers are far too low to recruit those with genuine talent, and in the state of affairs was fiercely lambasted by local authorities.
The city authorities have also instigated a biennial arts festival held in June featuring not only folk songs, kite-flying, water-puppetry and other local traditions, but also international groups. On these occasions the emperor sat on the raised dais, wearing a golden tunic and a crown decorated with nine dragons, under a spectacular gilded canopy. He faced south across the Esplanade of Great Salutations, a stone-paved courtyard where the mandarins stood, civil mandarins to the left and military on the right, lined up in their appointed places beside eighteen stelae denoting the nine subdivided ranks.
A French traveller in the s witnessed the colourful spectacle, with "perfume-bearers in royal-blue, fan-bearers in sky-blue waving enormous yellow feather fans, musicians and guardsmen and ranks of mandarins in their curious hats and gorgeous, purple-embroidered dragons, kow-towing down, down on their noses amidst clouds of incense — and all in a setting of blood-red lacquer scrawled with gold. Today these places are of interest more for their history than anything much to see on the ground, though the mouldering Royal Arena still hints at past spectacles.
Taking a boat along the Perfume River to get to the best mausoleums also offers the chance to stop off at the Thien Mu Pagoda and Hon Chen Temple on the way. Thuan An Beach is a bike-ride away, if you have the time and energy, making for an attractive journey across the estuary with views of fish farms to either side, though the beach itself is nothing spectacular. Bach Ma National Park is also within striking distance. Unlike previous Vietnamese dynasties, which buried their kings in ancestral villages, the Nguyen built themselves magnificent Royal Mausoleums in the valley of the Perfume River among low, forested hills to the south of Hue.
Of the seven, the contrasting mausoleums of Tu Duc, Khai Dinh and Minh Mang are the most attractive and best preserved, as well as being easily accessible.
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It often took years to find a site with the right aesthetic requirements that would also satisfy the court cosmologists charged with interpreting the underlying supernatural forces. Artificial lakes, waterfalls and hills were added to improve the geomantic qualities of the location, at the same time creating picturesque, almost romantic, garden settings for the mausoleums, of which the finest examples are those of Tu Duc and Minh Mang. Though details vary, all the mausoleums consist of three elements: a temple dedicated to the worship of the deceased emperor and his queen; a large, stone stele recording his biographical details and a history of his reign, usually written by his successor; and the royal tomb itself at the highest spot, enclosed within a wall and a heavy, securely fastened door.
Traditionally the burial place was kept secret as a measure against grave-robbers and enemies of the state, and in extreme cases all those who had been involved in the burial were killed immediately afterwards. Festivals at Hon Chen were banned between Independence and but have now resumed, taking place twice yearly in the middle of the third and seventh lunar month.
The celebrations, harking back to ancient rituals, include trance-dances performed by mediums, usually females dressed in brightly coloured costumes, who are transported by a pulsating musical accompaniment. During the American War, Quang Tri and Quang Binh, the two provinces either side of the DMZ, were the most heavily bombed and saw the highest casualties — civilian and military, American and Vietnamese.
If you have limited time then the Vinh Moc tunnels should be high on your list, along with a drive up Highway 9 to Khe Sanh, both for the scenery en route and the sobering battleground itself. Note that, although you can now visit the DMZ without a local guide, this is not recommended as most sites are unmarked and, more importantly, the guides — arranged in Dong Ha — know which paths are safe; local farmers are still occasionally killed or injured by unexploded ordnance in this area.
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Under the terms of the Geneva Accords, Vietnam was split in two along the Seventeenth Parallel, pending elections intended to reunite the country. All Communist troops and supporters were supposed to regroup north in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, leaving the southern Republic of Vietnam to non-Communists and various shades of opposition. When the elections failed to take place, the river became the de facto border until In reality both sides of the DMZ were anything but demilitarized after , and anyway the border was easily circumvented — by the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the west and sea routes to the east — enabling the North Vietnamese to bypass a string of American fire bases overlooking the river.
Though trials in met with some initial success, the "McNamara Line" was soon abandoned: sensors were confused by animals, especially elephants, and could be triggered deliberately by the tape-recorded sound of vehicle engines or troops on the march. Nor could massive, conventional bombing by artillery and aircraft contain the North Vietnamese, who finally stormed the DMZ in and pushed the border 20km further south. Exceptionally bitter fighting in the territory south of the Ben Hai River I Corps Military Region claimed more American lives in the five years leading up to than any other battle zone in Vietnam.
An amazing complex of tunnels where over a thousand people sheltered, sometimes for weeks on end, during the worst American bombardments. In an American Special Forces team arrived in Khe Sanh Town to train local Bru minority people in counter-insurgency, and then four years later the first batch of Marines was sent in to establish a forward base near Laos, to secure Highway 9 and to harass troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Skirmishes around Khe Sanh increased as intelligence reports indicated a massive build-up of North Vietnamese Army NVA troops in late , possibly as many as forty thousand, facing six thousand Marines together with a few hundred South Vietnamese and Bru.
The NVA attack came in the early hours of January 21, ; rockets raining in on the base added to the terror and confusion by striking an ammunition dump, gasoline tanks and stores of tear gas. There followed a seemingly endless, nerve-grinding NVA artillery barrage, when hundreds of shells fell on the base each day, interspersed with costly US infantry assaults into the surrounding hills. In an operation code-named "Niagara" General Westmoreland called in the air battalions to silence the enemy guns and break the siege by unleashing the most intense bombing raids of the war: in nine weeks nearly a hundred thousand tonnes of bombs pounded the area round the clock, averaging one airstrike every five minutes, backed up by napalm and defoliants.
Unbelievably the NVA were so well dug in and camouflaged that they not only withstood the onslaught but continued to return fire, despite horrendous casualties, estimated at ten thousand. On the US side around five hundred troops died at Khe Sanh although official figures record only American deaths, of which 43 occurred in a single helicopter accident , before a relief column broke through in early April, seventy-odd days after the siege had begun.
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NVA forces gradually pulled back and by the middle of March had all but gone, having successfully diverted American resources away from southern cities prior to the Tet Offensive. Three months later the Americans also quietly withdrew, leaving a plateau that resembled a lunar landscape, contaminated for years to come with chemicals and explosives; even the trees left standing were worthless because so much shrapnel was lodged in the timber.
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When American bombing raids north of the DMZ intensified in the inhabitants of Vinh Linh District began digging down into the red laterite soils, excavating more than fifty tunnels over the next two years. Although they were also used by North Vietnamese soldiers, the tunnels were primarily built to shelter a largely civilian population who worked the supply route from the Con Co Islands lying 28km offshore. Five tunnels belonged to Vinh Moc, a village located right on the coast where for two years people dug more than 2km of tunnel, which housed all six hundred villagers over varying periods from early until , when half decamped north to the relative safety of Nghe An Province.
The underground village was also equipped with a school, clinics and a maternity room where seventeen children were born. Each family was allocated a tiny cavern, the four-person space being barely larger than a single bed. They were only able to emerge at night and lack of fresh air and sunlight was a major problem, especially for young children who would sit in the tunnel mouths whenever possible.
In , the villagers of Vinh Moc were finally able to abandon their underground existence and rebuild their homes, rejoined by relatives from Nghe An a year later. You will see two bridges, the newly built one, which is open to traffic, and the unused Hien Luong Bridge that runs parallel to it.
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Until it was destroyed in , the original Hien Luong Bridge was painted half red and half yellow as a vivid reminder that this was a physical and ideological boundary separating the two Vietnams. The reconstructed iron-girder bridge officially re-opened in as a symbol of reunification, and for many years represented an important psychological barrier between north and south.
The Americans replied with everything in their arsenal, including long-range strafing from gunships in the South China Sea and carpet-bombing by Bs. The North Vietnamese were forced to withdraw temporarily, but then completely overran the base in the summer of The American front line comprised a string of firebases set up on a long, low ridge of hills looking north across the DMZ and the featureless plain of the Ben Hai River. From here American guns shelled seaborne infiltration routes and, for a while, this was the command post for the "McNamara Line", calling in airstrikes from Da Nang to pound targets — both real and faked — along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
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A total of 10, graves lie in the fourteen-hectare cemetery among whispering glades of evergreen trees. Arranged in five geographical regions, the graves are subdivided according to native province, and centred round memorial houses listing every name and grave number in the sector. Each headstone announces liet si "martyr" , together with as many details as are known: name, date and place of birth, date of enrolment, rank and the date they died.
The future looks rosy as well: a new deep-water port has been built to serve landlocked Laos, a number of special economic zones are under construction along the border, and Highway 9 has been upgraded as part of the massive Trans-Asian Highway project.
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As the closest town to the DMZ, Dong Ha attracts a lot of tourist traffic, though few people choose to stay here, preferring the comfort and facilities of Hue. It is essentially a two-street town: Highway 1, known here as Le Duan, forms the main artery as it passes through on its route north, while Highway 9 takes off inland at a central T-junction. Planning to travel here? Go tailor-made! Sign In. Consider changing the search query. List is empty.
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