Vietnam Military History Museum

Also known as Army Museum, the Vietnam Military History Museumis one of the oldest museums inHanoi. It was constructed at the end of 1954, and its opening ceremony was held in 1959. Located in the center ofHanoi, near V.L Lenin's bronze statue, theVietnamMilitaryHistoryMuseumis only600mfrom the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to the East, and covers an area of around 10,000 square meters. The museum has a comprehensive collection of war relics chartingVietnam's struggle for liberation. If you're only going to see one war museum inVietnam, this should be it.

Presenting the Vietnamese military history from the first period of founding the country to the Ho Chi Minh era, there are both indoor and outdoor sections in the museum with display of military-related artifacts. The displays are more than the usual collection of guns, spears and ammo, thousands of maps, photographs, and scale models of the past Vietnam wars are presented with a good deal of photojournalism and historical background, some even with English version. Outside, pieces of weaponry such as airplanes, tanks, heavy artilleries, rockets, mortars, bombs and so forth are displayed in the museum courtyard.

Alongside theMilitaryMuseumis the well-known ancientHanoiFlagTower, which is classified as a national historical and cultural monument. The construction of the tower was started in 1805 and completed in 1812, with a height of nearly31mand a circumstance of180m.