The Presidential Palace of Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, located in the city of Hanoi

Hanoi

Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...

, was built between 1900 and 1906 to house the French Governor-General of Indochina

French Indochina

French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....

.

History

It was constructed by Auguste Henri Vildieu

Auguste Henri Vildieu

Auguste Henri Vildieu was the French architectural adjutant in Hanoi while that city was an administrative center for the French colony of Indochina...

, the official French architect for Vietnam. Like most French Colonial architecture, the palace is pointedly European. The only visual cues that it is located in Vietnam at all are mango

Mango

The mango is a fleshy stone fruit belonging to the genus Mangifera, consisting of numerous tropical fruiting trees in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The mango is native to India from where it spread all over the world. It is also the most cultivated fruit of the tropical world. While...

 trees growing on the grounds.

The yellow

Yellow

Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the S cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 570–590 nm is yellow, as is light with a suitable mixture of red and green...

 palace stands behind wrought iron

Wrought iron

thumb|The [[Eiffel tower]] is constructed from [[puddle iron]], a form of wrought ironWrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon...

 gates flanked by sentry boxes. It incorporates elements of Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

 design, including:

• aedicules
• a formal piano nobile
  Piano nobile
  The piano nobile is the principal floor of a large house, usually built in one of the styles of classical renaissance architecture...
  
   reached by a grand staircase
• broken pediments
• classical columns
• quoins
  Quoin (architecture)
  Quoins are the cornerstones of brick or stone walls. Quoins may be either structural or decorative. Architects and builders use quoins to give the impression of strength and firmness to the outline of a building...
  
  

When Vietnam achieved independence in 1954, Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh

Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...

 refused to live in the grand structure for symbolic reasons, although he still received state

Sovereign state

A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

 guests there, and he eventually built a traditional Vietnamese stilt house

Stilt house

Stilt houses or pile dwellings or palafitte are houses raised on piles over the surface of the soil or a body of water. Stilt houses are built primarily as a protection against flooding, but also serve to keep out vermin...

 and carp

Carp

Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish of the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. The cypriniformes are traditionally grouped with the Characiformes, Siluriformes and Gymnotiformes to create the superorder Ostariophysi, since these groups have certain...

 pond on the grounds. His house and the grounds have been made into the Presidential Palace Historical Site

Presidential Palace Historical Site

Presidential Palace Historical Site , which is located in Hanoi, Vietnam, is the place where Ho Chi Minh lived and worked in most of his revolutionary life...

 in 1975.

The palace hosts government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

 meetings. It is not open to the public, although one may walk around the grounds for a fee.

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is a large memorial in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is located in the centre of Ba Dinh Square, which is the place where Vietminh leader Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence on September 2, 1945, establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.- History :Construction...

is located nearby the palace.