Places
Hoa Lo Prison Museum
The Maison Centrale: a hard, necessary museum about the prison that stood by the southern gate.
Hoa Lo was built by the French colonial administration as the Maison Centrale and later held American prisoners of war, who named it the Hanoi Hilton. What remains is a fraction of the original complex, kept as a museum of both eras.
It is the heaviest sight in this guide and one of the most important. Give it an unhurried hour, and read the Vietnamese captions alongside the English ones; the two tell the story from both sides.
Tickets. Standard ticket 50,000 VND (checked for this guide in November 2026; confirm at the gate).