Vietnam’s “best account” of its history is set in “one of Hanoi’s finest buildings,” says Rusty Compass. Focusing on Vietnam’s “pre-20th century story,” the National Museum of Vietnamese History offers a “refreshing break from war and propaganda.” It’s housed in a 1932 building designed by French architect Ernest Hèbrard “in a style called Indochina architecture,” explains AFAR. The numerous displays “trace the country’s history” and include “bronze sculptures, excavations from Han tombs, Dong Son drums, funerary jars, ceramics from the Nguyen dynasty, and printing blocks for Buddhist prayer books.”
There’s an extensive collection of over 7,000 artefacts arranged chronologically, says City Pass Guide. The story starts with “primitive life in Vietnam,” then ranges through the “August 1945 Revolution and the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.” Highlights include a “bronze Dong Son drums and 2,500 year-old coffin canoe.” The museum is divided into four exhibition areas: “Vietnam in the prehistory, the early national construction to the Tran Dynasty, Vietnam from the Ho Dynasty to the August 1945 Revolution and Champa stone sculptures.” And it’s a cultural and scientific centre that “preserves the nation's valuable tangible cultural heritages.”