Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) • Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon Heritage and Southern Vietnamese Energy

A Metropolis Where History Remains Visible

Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, is today the largest city in Vietnam and one of the country’s main economic centres. Behind the image of a fast-moving modern metropolis, the city still preserves many visible traces of its past. Historic districts contain monuments from the French colonial era, while major commercial quarters reflect the trading networks that long connected southern Vietnam with the wider region.

This video offers a concise yet meaningful introduction to that layered identity. It moves through three emblematic sites: Notre-Dame Cathedral of Saigon, the Central Post Office and Binh Tay Market. Together, these places reveal three important dimensions of the city: colonial urban planning, public architecture and the commercial vitality that continues to shape urban life.

Major Landmarks and Commercial Traditions

Notre-Dame Cathedral of Saigon is one of the city’s most recognisable monuments. Built in the late nineteenth century, it reflects the desire of the colonial administration to create representative European-style buildings in Saigon. Its red brick façade, twin bell towers and central location give it a strong presence within the urban landscape. The cathedral also illustrates the religious diversity that became part of the city’s history.

Nearby stands the Central Post Office, another important landmark. Its large interior hall, metal structure, spacious proportions and decorative details make it one of the most notable public buildings of colonial Saigon. Designed as both a functional institution and a symbol of modern communication, it represented the connection of the city to wider administrative and commercial networks.

Binh Tay Market offers a striking contrast. Located in Cholon, the historic Chinese district, it reflects the commercial traditions that helped make the city prosperous. Its architecture, organised around courtyards, covered galleries and circulation spaces, responds directly to the needs of wholesale and retail trade. More than a place of exchange, it embodies the multicultural character of Ho Chi Minh City.

A City Shaped by Trade and Transformation

The area of present-day Ho Chi Minh City once belonged to Khmer political spheres before being gradually integrated into the southward expansion of Vietnam. From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onward, the region gained importance because of its strategic location between river routes, fertile agricultural lands and maritime access.

In the nineteenth century, French conquest transformed Saigon deeply. The city was redesigned with broad avenues, planned districts, administrative buildings and modern infrastructure. Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Central Post Office belong to this period, when Saigon became one of the principal cities of French Indochina.

The twentieth century brought further upheavals through war, independence, reunification in 1975 and the renaming of the city in honour of Ho Chi Minh. Despite political change, the city retained its central economic role.

Today, towers, modern transport networks and expanding districts stand beside older buildings and traditional commercial areas. This coexistence gives Ho Chi Minh City a distinctive identity: neither a preserved colonial museum nor a city detached from its past, but an urban landscape where several historical layers remain active.

What the Videos on This Site Make Especially Clear

A video created from carefully selected and animated photographs is particularly effective for a city such as Ho Chi Minh City. Slow movement across still images allows viewers to observe architectural details of the cathedral, the balance of its façade and its relationship with the surrounding modern city.

For the Central Post Office, this method highlights interior depth, structural lines and decorative features that can be missed during a brief visit. The viewer can better understand the logic of a building designed to be both practical and prestigious.

Binh Tay Market also benefits from this approach. The organisation of galleries, colours, movement patterns and density of activity become easier to read when images allow time for observation.

The sequence of sites also creates a meaningful narrative. Monumental heritage and everyday commerce appear not as separate themes, but as connected parts of the city’s identity.

A Gateway to Southern Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City brings together historical memory, colonial architecture and commercial energy within one powerful urban setting. This video offers an accessible and coherent introduction to the city. To continue the discovery, the detailed pages dedicated to the featured monuments and market provide further insight into one of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic metropolitan centres.

Audio Commentary Transcript

A huge metropolis of more than 8,000,000 inhabitants, Ho Chi Minh City is a city whose current urbanization is inherited from the French colonial period, leaving relatively little room for remarkable monuments typical of the region, unlike many other Vietnamese cities.

The construction of Cathedral of Our Lady of Saigon lasted from 1877 to 1880. Of Romanesque inspiration, mixed with the Gothic style, the cathedral is based on the model of Notre Dame de Paris, but much smaller. 

This cathedral was built to offer a place of worship to the Christians of the region, but also and above all to show the people the strength of French civilization.

Another remarkable building from the colonial era, the central post office was built between 1886 and 1891. This remarkable construction has a framework designed by Gustave Eiffel.

Another must-see in Ho Chi Minh City is the huge Binh Tay indoor market. Like all markets in Southeast Asia, there are large quantities of fresh produce, but also loose clothing, and, more surprising for tourists, crudely imitated counterfeit money, paper costumes and models of houses made of paper or cardboard. All these unusual things are intended to be burned as an offering, thus allowing the souls of the dead to improve their daily lives in the afterlife. This type of products are not only found in this market, they are commonplace in Vietnam.