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#2 Best Neighborhood in Hanoi

French Quarter

Colonial Hanoi, tree-lined

About the neighborhood

Urban district in Red River Delta, Vietnam

Ba Đình is one of the four original urban districts (quận) of Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. The district currently has 14 wards, covering a total area of 9.21 square kilometres (3.56sqmi). As of 2019, there were 221,893 people residing in the district, the population density is 24,000 inhabitants per square kilometer.

Ba Đình district has a large number of monuments, landmarks and relics, including Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, One Pillar Pagoda, Flag Tower of Hanoi and Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Ba Đình is the political center of Vietnam. Most of the government offices and embassies are located here including the most important sites of the Vietnamese state such as the Ba Đình Square, the Presidential Palace, the National Assembly Building, the Government Office and the Communist Party of Vietnam central headquarters. It was formerly called the "French Quarter" (Khu phố Pháp) because of a high concentration of French-styled villas and government buildings built when Hanoi was the capital of French Indochina. This name is still used in travel literature. The southern half of Hoàn Kiếm district is also called the "French Quarter", also because of numerous French-styled buildings, most of which are now used as foreign embassies.

The wreckage of a B-52 bomber shot down during the Vietnam War can be seen in Hữu Tiệp Lake in the Ngọc Hà neighborhood.

History

One of the oldest remaining structures in the neighborhood is the One Pillar Pagoda, built under the Lý dynasty. In 1901, the Presidential Palace was built. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence at Ba Dinh Square to approximately 500,000 people. Following his death in 1969, the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh was put on display in the Hồ Chí Minh Mausoleum, located in Ba Dinh Square, in 1975.

Location

Ba Đình is located at 21° 2′ 12″ N, 105° 50′ 10″ E, in the center of Hanoi. It's surrounded to the north by Tây Hồ, to the east by the Red River, to the south by Đống Đa, to the southeast by Hoàn Kiếm and to the west by Cầu Giấy.

Administrative divisions

The district contains 14 wards (phường)

Cống Vị

Điện Biên

Đội Cấn

Giảng Võ

Kim Mã

Liễu Giai

Ngọc Hà

Ngọc Khánh

Nguyễn Trung Trực

Phúc Xá

Quán Thánh

Thành Công

Trúc Bạch

Vĩnh Phúc

Education

International schools:

Hanoi International School

Singapore International School (SIS), Vạn Phúc in the Vạn Phúc Diplomatic Compound

Gallery

Notes

References

21°02′12″N 105°50′10″E / 21.03667°N 105.83611°E / 21.03667; 105.83611

Encyclopedic content adapted from the Wikipedia article on French Quarter, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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French Quarter in pictures

French Quarter photo 1French Quarter photo 2French Quarter photo 3French Quarter photo 4French Quarter photo 5French Quarter photo 6

Photos from the Wikipedia article on French Quarter, available under the same CC BY-SA / public-domain terms as the source article.

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