North Gate (Vietnamese: Cửa Bắc) is the only remaining city gate of Hanoi which has gone through a tragic history with two battles conquered by the French colonialists. Currently, the North Gate has become a tourist attraction and historical relic not to be missed when traveling to Hanoi.
History and architecture of the North Gate
The North Gate in Hanoi was built by the Nguyen Dynasty in 1805 on the foundation of a gate under the Le Dynasty in the style of a gazebo – the upper floor and the lower citadel, 8.71m high, 17.08m wide, 2.48m thick walls.
The floor is built with a wooden frame, roofed with tiles, and has doors in four directions. Rainwater on the gazebo is drained downward through two stone gutters.
The citadel was built very solidly with stone and brick, the foot of the embankment was made of stone, and the citadel gate was also arched with bricks in the arrangement of one brick horizontally and one brick vertically. The bricks for construction have dimensions of 35.5cm x 10cm x 12cm. Millet stones range in size from 38 to 86cm long.
The edge of the door has a rectangular stone embankment and the upper border is made of stone decorated with lotus flowers. The two restored wooden city gates have a total area of 24m2, weight about 16 tons, running on bronze wheels weighing about 80kg. Outside, above the city gate, there are three Chinese characters carved in stone: “Main Northern Gate”, and the border is decorated with flower strings.
Although North Gate is a work built by the Nguyen Dynasty, at the foot of this majestic gate are layers upon layers of citadel relics from previous dynasties, affirming the continuity in the thousand-year history of the Imperial Citadel.
In 1998, in the North Gate area, archaeologists found many architectural traces at a depth of 1.66m and 2.2m, including traces of sections of city walls built of stone and bricks of the Le Dynasty.
Cultural Relics
Today, the North Gate has become an interesting tourist destination for domestic and foreign tourists. Visitors can easily see that outside North Gate there are still two traces of French cannonballs when they used warships to attack Hanoi citadel from the banks of the Red River in 1882.
two traces of French cannonballs
Inside North Gate is a display area about two General Governors of Vietnam: Nguyen Tri Phuong and Hoang Dieu – heroes who made great contributions to the task of protecting Hanoi citadel in the second half of the 19th century. Their statues are made of bronze, placed in the wooden-framed floor.
The North Gate of Hanoi Citadel is currently located in the Thang Long Imperial Citadel complex. Tourists who want to go up to the gazebo can buy tickets to visit the Imperial Citadel at the gate on Hoang Dieu Street, priced at 30,000 VND per trip. This area is open every day of the week, except Monday, from 8:00 a.m. to 17:00 p.m
Source: collected by An
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