National Museum of Vietnamese History (or, 'and now for something completely different')

So it turns out I lied. The British Museum last September wasn't the first time that I fell in love with a national museum and its architecture. Upon further consideration, I realised that happened last July, when I travelled to visit family in Vietnam and I took a trip to the National Museum of Vietnamese History in Hanoi.

I only took a few pictures myself, so will supplement them with ones I have found on the internet.

The first noteworthy thing about my trip to this museum was the rain. I'm from Newcastle so am used to a bit of rain, but the rainy season in Vietnam is something else, and it just so happened that the day I visited the museum was during a period of particularly impressive downfall. Hence why all the pictures I took outside look a bit soggy.

The second thing is the building itself. The museum is an extremely aesthetically pleasing mix of Vietnamese and French colonial architecture. According to Wikipedia, what you get when you mix these two elements is called 'Indochina architecture', and this particular example was completed in 1932. From the outside, it looks a bit like this:

Here it is looking a bit sunnier. Image from http://fvheritage.org/events/museums/

Dotted all around the grounds are little statues, shrines and memorial stone things.

The whole of the nearby outside section was also paved with some pretty patterned tiles, which I liked.

Inside the museum, it's all light blue, and generally continued the colonial feeling you got from the outside. I did warn you my photos were nothing to shout about.

On each floor, off this main staircase area, there were several galleries, from what I can remember organised relatively chronologically.
There's a nice picture of one of the galleries here, courtesy of Naveen Shunmuganathan on Flickr.

The final thing I want to briefly mention is how taken aback I was by the actual contents of the museum.
It was jam packed with artefacts from pretty much every period of Vietnamese history, from prehistoric times until relatively recently. Although there weren't detailed English descriptions in many cases, the objects inside were fascinating - I know NOTHING about Vietnamese history with the exception of what my 'The US in Vietnam' AS level history module covered, so it was quite startling and humbling to see the amazing feats of artistic endeavour that they were up to when in England we were all fussing about in the mud during the Wars of the Roses. I remember that I made this particular comparison based on a remarkable piece of wood carving - it also has something to do with the fact I'd just sat an exam on Britain from 1330-1550, and really wasn't a big fan of the Wars of the Roses at that point.

So there you go! If you ever find yourself in Hanoi, I would definitely recommend tearing yourself away from your bowl of Pho and negotiating the intimidating scooter-filled streets to pay a visit to the National Museum of Vietnamese History. And hopefully you will come away with some better pictures than the ones I took.