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Citadel of Hue - Imperial City
An entry from South-east Asia journal, by George Pembury
About this visit
Short summary:
The Citadel is a collection of stark decaying buildings from the Nguyen dynasty built in 1804, some buildings are taken care of a little better than others. A 2 kilometre square wall surrounded by a moat and covering about 500 hectares encircles the grounds. The imperial city is within the Citadel walls and includes a number of interesting buildings from the period of 1800 depicting Vietnamese architecture from this period.
How to get there:
Located right in the centre of Hue and easily reached by on foot by crossing the Bridge over the Perfume River.
What I experienced here
This is a huge fortress city covering over 500 hectares and includes a large number of villas, palaces, pagodas and other official buildings. Disappointingly, this site has not been very well looked after and there is very little information to understand the history here, although there is a room with a large number of old black and white photos of the Nguyen Dynasty and the royal family.
We visited during a tropical depression and so it was raining all day, we really were quite miserable and not really interested in it at all. We rushed around as most of it was outside, we spent most of the time sheltering from the rain within the various pagodas.
We really felt quite depressed and wet during this visit and we wanted to fly out to somewhere warmer and dryer but we were compelled to stay here for the two days that we had arranged to.
We discovered that since 1802 Hue was the capital of Vietnam and the seat of power for the Nguyen Dynasty. Construction of the Citadel commenced in 1804.
It rains a lot in late November !
Photos
Last updated date
Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - 17:02
