The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is the final resting place of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam. It’s a large building located in the center of Ba Dinh Square, where Ho Chi Minh, Chairman of the Communist Party of Vietnam from 1951 until his death in 1969, read the Declaration of Independence on 2 September 1945, establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It is also known as Ba Đình Mausoleum and is open to the public.
Ho Chi Minh’s body is kept in state in an impressively austere, Russian-style mausoleum. The entry is like that of an amusement park ride, snaking along, forwards and back, to its final destination. Lines can be quite long, especially when gaggles of school children on field trips are being led through. Even then, at the end of the line, there’s a good distance to go and viewers are only allowed to proceed one group at a time. You’ll have to check any photographic equipment before entering as pictures of the body are not permitted. Once inside, you’ll only get a minute or so with Bac Ho. After 40 years of preservation, Vietnam’s founding father is looking pretty good — a bit like he’s just taking a nap. Teams of experts from Russia still visit regularly to consult and help out on the preservation.
None of this is what Ho Chi Minh wanted: He requested that he be cremated and his ashes spread in three areas in northern, central and southern Vietnam. A grave plot was, to his mind, a waste of land that might be otherwise productively used. But it was exactly this kind of earnest devotion to his country that made it impossible for his successors to honour his wishes. The cult of personality surrounding Ho Chi Minh was their best bet for keeping the country united after the war, and to preserve that, his body had to be preserved as well. The Romanesque structure is modelled after the one in Moscow where Lenin is on display. He, too, had requested only a modest burial.
It’s worth mentioning that this sight is Vietnam’s holiest of holies. A reverential and respectful attitude is obligatory, and this is the one place where foreign visitors might be vigorously chastised, or even removed, by uniformed guards. There’s an elaborate list of rules as you enter which you should try to adhere to, including prohibitions against the wearing of an ‘unserious costume,’ or being in a ‘status of sickness’. So if you get a case of the giggles, bite the inside of your cheek.
Go visiting Ho Chi Minh mausoleum:
8 Hung Vuong (access via 5 Hgoc Ha St), Ba Dinh (on the very northwestern edge of Hoan Kiem district, but not too far from the centre)
Opening Hours: 07:00 to 11:00 ((Everyday except Monday and Friday, and from Sept 5- early Nov)
Join our Hanoi city tour to visit Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
