Explore Ho Chi Minh City

The Ho Chi Minh City Opera House, also called the Saigon Opera House or Municipal Theatre, was completed in 1900 to designs by Félix Olivier, with a façade that echoes the Petit Palais in Paris. From 1956 it housed South Vietnam's National Assembly and became a theatre again in 1976. Today it seats 500 and stages ballet, opera and concerts.

Ho Chi Minh City Hall was built by the French in 1898–1909 as the Hôtel de Ville of Saigon and faces Nguyễn Huệ Boulevard with a clock tower and an ornate façade inspired by the Paris town hall. It is the seat of the city's People's Committee and People's Council; visitors see it from the boulevard, as the interior opens only on occasional public days.

Nguyễn Huệ Boulevard runs through the centre of Ho Chi Minh City from City Hall to the Saigon River. It began as a canal, was filled in in 1886–1887 as the boulevard Charner and took its present name in 1955. Since 2015 its central lanes have formed a pedestrian square, and at Tết it is decorated as the Nguyễn Huệ Flower Street.

The Museum of Ho Chi Minh City occupies the former Gia Long Palace, a neoclassical building designed by Alfred Foulhoux and completed in 1890. It was the residence of the governors of Cochinchina and, in 1962–1963, of President Ngô Đình Diệm. Its galleries now present the history of Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City.

Saigon Central Post Office is a working post office on Paris Commune Square, beside the cathedral, built in 1886–1891 to designs by the colony's chief architect Alfred Foulhoux. In its vaulted hall, two maps painted in 1892 show the telegraph lines of southern Vietnam and Cambodia and Saigon with its surroundings.

Bến Thành Market is a covered market in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City. The present hall was built by the French contractors Brossard et Mopin between 1912 and 1914, and the clock tower over its south gate has become a symbol of the city. Nearly 1,500 stalls sell food, textiles, souvenirs and household goods.

The Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts occupies three buildings, the main one a villa built in 1929–1934 for the Hui Bon Hoa family; the museum moved there in 1987. Its collection covers Vietnamese sculpture and oil, silk and lacquer painting, folk woodcut prints, ceramics, Buddhist art, and Champa and Óc Eo relics.

The Mariamman Temple at 45 Trương Định Street in Ho Chi Minh City is a Hindu temple to the goddess Mariamman, built around the turn of the 20th century by Tamil traders from India. A gateway tower about 12 metres high, covered in painted figures of deities, rises above the entrance, and statues of goddesses line the outer walls.

The Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History opened on 1 January 1929 as the Musée Blanchard de la Brosse, in a building designed by the French architect Auguste Delaval, and took its present name in 1979. Its galleries trace Vietnam from prehistory to the Nguyễn dynasty, with Đông Sơn bronzes, Óc Eo finds and Cham and Khmer stone sculpture.

Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens was commissioned by Admiral de La Grandière in 1864 and opened to the public in 1869. Its shaded grounds hold some 590 animals of 125 species, among them giraffes, white Bengal tigers and gibbons, and about 1,830 trees and plants, with an orchid garden. The Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History also stands within the grounds.

The Jade Emperor Pagoda at 73 Mai Thị Lựu Street in Ho Chi Minh City was built in the early 20th century by the Cantonese migrant Lưu Minh as a hall to the Taoist Jade Emperor. Built of brick with a tiled roof lined with coloured ceramic figures, it has been run by Buddhist monks since 1982 and was renamed Phước Hải Tự in 1984.

Tân Định Church, formally the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is a Catholic parish church on Hai Bà Trưng Street in Ho Chi Minh City, completed in 1876. Mainly neo-Romanesque with Gothic and Renaissance elements, it has been painted pink inside and out since 1957, which gives it the nickname 'the pink church'.

The Thien Hau Temple, officially the Tuệ Thành Assembly Hall, is a temple of the sea goddess Mazu, called Thiên Hậu in Vietnamese, on Nguyễn Trãi Street in Chợ Lớn. The Cantonese community built it around 1760 and repaired it many times up to 1916. Porcelain figures on its roofs show scenes from Chinese legend, and three statues of the goddess stand on the altar.

Bình Tây Market is the largest market in Chợ Lớn, the Chinese quarter of Ho Chi Minh City. It opened in 1928, financed by the Chaozhou-born merchant Quách Đàm, and fills a whole block around a central courtyard, with a clock tower over the main gate. A renovation that restored the original tiled roofs ended in 2018; more than 1,400 stalls trade mainly wholesale.