| Complete
list of Hue hotels |
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Almost at the dividing line between
North and
South Vietnam sits the city of Hue, once the imperial
capital of the first dynasty to unite the country
and Vietnam's last emperor. 142 years before Emperor
Bao-Dai abdicated - after Ho Chi Minh's declaration
of Independence in 1945 - his predecessor and
Nguyen dynasty founder, Gia Long, finally brought
200 years of civil war to an end.
He united the two disparate ends of his kingdom
with the construction of the Mandarin Highway
(now Highway 1), connecting the North with the
South, and decreed that a magnificent royal capital
would be built at the point where the two cultures
met - Hue
Rivalling - and somewhat modeled upon - the Forbidden
City in Beijing, the three enclosures of the Royal
Citadel spread across six square kilometres. The
compound is enclosed within walls ten metres thick,
which took 20,000 men to complete. At the Citadel's
centre is the lavish Imperial Palace where once
no-one but the emperor, his concubines and eunuchs
were admitted.
 The
Citadel has since fallen on hard times, floods
in the 19th century caused severe damage to many
of the wooden structures, which have also suffered
the ravages of termites and dry rot. The massive
exterior walls and ornate gateways - as well as
many of the buildings within the Citadel - were
casualties of a pitched battle between US and
NVA forces during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Those
wounds are now slowly being repaired, with financial
aid and technical support from UNESCO, which declared
Hue a World Heritage Site in 1993. |
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