Hanoi Museum world’s 4th most overlooked building

[nguyen to loan]

The Hanoi Museum is in the "Top 10 Overlooked Stunning Buildings" put together by members and editors of travel website VirtualTourist.

“While most visitors to Vietnam focus on temples and colonial buildings, a new modern museum in the country's capital might change that tradition,” Reuters quoted the travel website as commenting on the museum.

The Hanoi Museum, designed by GMP Architekten of Germany, incorporates some common themes of museum construction with a new twist, literally. Photos of the museum's interior, with its white walls and large spiral ramp, somewhat resemble Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, except the exterior of the Hanoi Museum completely contrasts the former's exterior.

The Hanoi Museum resembles an inverted pyramid with four levels of descending squares, the bottom level significantly smaller than even the first floor. This significantly smaller bottom level means that the surrounding gardens and water features almost appear to begin beneath the building leading visitors from the outside in. This was also taken into account when planning the gardens and surrounding area of the museum.

Visitors encounter exhibits from the history of Hanoi and reconstructed traditional Vietnamese villages upon entering the museum landscape and then can enter the museum from any one of the four sides.

 

Inside the museum. Photo: Tuoi Tre

VirtualTourist provides insider travel tips, reviews and photos posted by real travelers on over 72,000 travel destinations around the world.

While most travelers know to visit the Musee d'Orsay while in Paris or the Guggenheim Museum when in New York City, there are hundreds of buildings that get overlooked, either because of their location or simply the number of sites in the city deemed worth seeing, Reuters said.

In late January, Hanoi was also ranked second in the list of 100 cities with the best hotel services, as conducted by France-based tourism website Trivago.

Below is the Top 10 Overlooked Stunning Buildings by VirtualTourist:

1. Military History Museum - Dresden, Germany

2. The Mezquita - Cordoba, Spain

3. The Jantar Mantar - Jaipur, India

4. The Hanoi Museum - Hanoi, Vietnam

5. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - Boston, Mass, USA

6. Horta Museum - Brussels, Belgium

7. Moulay Ismail Mausoleum - Meknes, Morocco

8. Selimiye Mosque, Edirne, Turkey

9. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth - Fort Worth, Texas

10. Rila Monastery - Rila, Bulgaria