Ho Chi Minh Museum, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images

Ho Chi Minh Museum

Ho Chi Minh City


Nicknamed the ‘Dragon House’ (Nha Rong), this former customs house was built by the French authorities in 1863. The museum houses many of Ho Chi Minh’s personal effects, including some of his clothing, his sandals and spectacles. Information is available in English. It's on the waterfront, just across Ben Nghe Channel from District 1; reach it on foot by heading south along the Saigon River then over the bridge.

Otherwise, it covers the story of the man born Nguyen Tat Thanh – from his childhood to his political awakening, his role in booting out the French and leading North Vietnam, and his death in 1969 – mainly through photographs.

The link between Ho Chi Minh and the museum building is tenuous: 21-year-old Ho, having signed on as a stoker and galley boy on a French freighter, left Vietnam from here in 1911 and began 30 years of exile in France, the Soviet Union, the UK, China and elsewhere.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Ho Chi Minh City attractions

1. Bitexco Financial Tower

0.28 MILES

This elegant 68-storey, 262m-high Carlos Zapata–designed skyscraper dwarfs all around it. It's reportedly shaped like a lotus bulb, but it also resembles…

2. Me Linh Square

0.49 MILES

This compact tree-studded square facing the Saigon River features a statue of the 13th-century Vietnamese general, Tran Hung Dao.

3. Fine Arts Museum

0.53 MILES

With its airy corridors and verandas, this elegant 1929 colonial-era, yellow-and-white building is stuffed with period details; it is exuberantly tiled…

4. Saigon Central Mosque

0.57 MILES

Built by South Indian Muslims in 1935 on the site of an earlier mosque, lime-green Saigon Central Mosque is an immaculately clean and well-tended island…

5. San Art

0.59 MILES

This inspiring, independent, nonprofit gallery was founded by artists, giving other local artists the opportunity to display and develop their intriguing…

6. Ton Duc Thang Museum

0.6 MILES

This small patriotic museum is dedicated to Ton Duc Thang, Ho Chi Minh’s successor as president of Vietnam. Born in 1888 in Long Xuyen in the Mekong Delta…

7. Opera House

0.63 MILES

Gracing the intersection of Ð Dong Khoi and ÐL Le Loi, this grand colonial edifice with a sweeping staircase was built in 1897 and is one of the city's…

8. People’s Committee Building

0.7 MILES

One of the city’s most prominent landmarks is home to the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee. Built between 1901 and 1908, the former Hôtel de Ville…

  • placement: superzone
  • path: Destinations/POIs/superzone
  • possible size: [970, 250], [970, 90], [728, 90], [1, 1],
  • targeting:
    {
      "url": "vietnam/ho-chi-minh-city/attractions/ho-chi-minh-museum/a/poi-sig/403318/357884",
      "destination": "Ho-Chi-Minh-City",
      "continent": "Asia",
      "country": "Vietnam",
      "city": "Ho-Chi-Minh-City",
      "position": "superzone"
    }