French colonial era city hall building in downtown Ho Chi Minh City
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- May 1997
- Location
- Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- License
- This photograph copyright ©1997. Terms of use
See this photograph in context
- French colonization and Vietnam wars: Photographs and text tell the story of Vietnam under French colonial rule, its experience during twentieth-century wars with France and the United States, and its recent liberalization. (Page 2)
Related media
Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for architecture, city hall, French colonial era, Ho Chi Minh City, monuments, People's Committee Hall, political symbolism, and Saigon.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
The city hall building in downtown Ho Chi Minh City is one of the best preserved French colonial era buildings left from old Saigon. The tan and white building is two stories high with a central clock tower, sculpted cornices, and two red-tiled Mansard roof towers.
Two visitors with backpacks walk toward the building and a construction crane is visible in the upper right.
Built by the French colonial government in the early 1900s, the ornate building is still used as a city hall but now it is named The People’s Committee Hall. The inside of the building is not open to the public.
A popular statue of “Uncle Ho” (Ho Chi Minh) reading to a young girl is visible in the plaza in front of the city hall building.
