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Ornately carved and painted Women's Gate into the Imperial City at Hue
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- May 1997
- Location
- Hue, Vietnam
- License
- This photograph copyright ©1997. Terms of use
See this photograph in context
- Northern and coastal Vietnam: Waterway settlements and Chinese influences: Photographs and text tell the story of fishing, trade, and Chinese influence on the history and culture of Vietnam. (Page 14)
- Asia: Learn about the history, cultures, and geography of the nations and peoples of Asia from this sampling of great educational resources that can be found on LEARN NC.
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Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for architecture, China, Citadel, emperors, Forbidden City, Hue, Imperial City, kings, palaces, political symbolism, Vietnam, and Women's Gate.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
A group of women in sunhats can be seen walking through the ornately carved and painted Women’s Gate into the Imperial City at Hué. Protective carved dragons adorn the tiled roofs and arched doorways.
The Women’s Gate is one of the ten arched gateways entering the walled compound that guards the palace, Buddhist temples, gardens, statues, and royal tombs in Hué’s Imperial City.
Most of the original buildings of Hué’s Imperial City date to ambitious efforts by Nguyen dynasty rulers in the 1800s to control both the north and south of Vietnam from a centrally located capital.
The architectural plan of Hué’s walled Imperial City was designed as a near replica of the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. While drawing on the symbolic model of the powerful Chinese court, the Vietnamese here constructed two-tiered, rather than three-tiered, roofs to show their respect for the powerful Chinese emperor.
