Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City Museum, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Gia Long Palace (Vi: Dinh Gia Long), now officially the Hồ Chí Minh City Museum (Vietnamese language: Bảo tàng Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) is a historical site and museum in Hồ Chí Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. The museum is situated at the corner of Lý Tự Trọng and Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa streets, located on 2 hectares of land, near the Independence Palace.
The 2-floored palace building covers an area over 1700 m², using classical Baroque architecture with European and Oriental influences. The flooring, staircases and halls were European-styled, while the roof was Oriental-inspired. Surrounding the palace is a trapezoid-shaped flower garden, with 4 pathways.
The front face of the roof is decorated with grotesques. Other exterior structural designs include symbolic chickens representing daytime and owls for nighttime and ring-enclosed white flowers. Many other motifs embossed on the roof is a combination of Greek mythological symbols, iconic plants and tropical animals such as lizards and birds flying or expanding its wings.
Diệm commissioned the construction of three extremely deep underground tunnels leading from the palace to other parts of the city so that he and important government officials/military figures could escape in the event of a coup. During the 1963 coup d'etat, Diệm is widely believed to have used one of these escape routes to escape the siege on the palace, which caused considerable damage. He fled to a supporter's house in Cholon but was captured and executed a day later. The successor presidents still worked there until the completion of re-built Independence Palace, in 1966. The tunnels were 2.2 m high, with casted reinforced concrete (170 kg of iron / 1 m3 of concrete). Walls were 1 m thick, with 6 iron vault doors for entry and exit. The tunnels had 2 downward stairs, leading to a basement with 6 rooms totalling 1392.3 m², which included conference rooms, offices, bathrooms, electrical rooms. The Presidential Office and Presidential Adviser's Offices were equipped with battery banks for uninterruptible power supply, portable radios, RCA transceivers. There's 2 exit tunnels towards Le Thanh Ton Street, 6 ventilation holes, sewage drainages. ~ Wikipedia
The 2-floored palace building covers an area over 1700 m², using classical Baroque architecture with European and Oriental influences. The flooring, staircases and halls were European-styled, while the roof was Oriental-inspired. Surrounding the palace is a trapezoid-shaped flower garden, with 4 pathways.
The front face of the roof is decorated with grotesques. Other exterior structural designs include symbolic chickens representing daytime and owls for nighttime and ring-enclosed white flowers. Many other motifs embossed on the roof is a combination of Greek mythological symbols, iconic plants and tropical animals such as lizards and birds flying or expanding its wings.
Diệm commissioned the construction of three extremely deep underground tunnels leading from the palace to other parts of the city so that he and important government officials/military figures could escape in the event of a coup. During the 1963 coup d'etat, Diệm is widely believed to have used one of these escape routes to escape the siege on the palace, which caused considerable damage. He fled to a supporter's house in Cholon but was captured and executed a day later. The successor presidents still worked there until the completion of re-built Independence Palace, in 1966. The tunnels were 2.2 m high, with casted reinforced concrete (170 kg of iron / 1 m3 of concrete). Walls were 1 m thick, with 6 iron vault doors for entry and exit. The tunnels had 2 downward stairs, leading to a basement with 6 rooms totalling 1392.3 m², which included conference rooms, offices, bathrooms, electrical rooms. The Presidential Office and Presidential Adviser's Offices were equipped with battery banks for uninterruptible power supply, portable radios, RCA transceivers. There's 2 exit tunnels towards Le Thanh Ton Street, 6 ventilation holes, sewage drainages. ~ Wikipedia