What to see, eat and do in the Huế Citadel — a few days at walking pace, and where to stay inside the walls
On 30 August 2026, The Times published its 11 most beautiful places in Vietnam. Number one was not a beach or a mountain but “the walled city, Hue”. Its writer, Joshua Zukas, who has lived in Hanoi for more than a decade, praised “an urban grace … that feels vanishingly rare in Vietnam”: broad, tree-lined boulevards, the park-fringed river, lotus lakes that bloom each summer, and a walled neighbourhood “like a self-contained garden”, best explored by bicycle. He also noticed the other side of it — the “scruffy lakes fringed with flowers” tucked behind the faded palaces. Both are true, and both are why we love it.
That walled city is Huế’s Citadel, the old imperial capital’s centre, home to the Imperial City and the Forbidden Purple City — reason enough on their own for the journey. Behind its walls, an entire traditional Vietnamese city has survived intact, village-like in its rhythms. A house is also a shop, its owner selling from her own doorway. Old women still work the street trades passed down through generations. At dusk, tables are pulled out for coffee beside one of the Citadel’s lakes as the evening cool arrives. Within the walls nothing may rise higher than the King’s own gates, and so the old scale has held.
This is where we chose to build Thiên Ý, and where we live. Here is how we would spend a few days in it, on foot, by bicycle or by cyclo. Some places are grand; others are plainly local — a salt-coffee counter, a café where children play, a karaoke room on a Friday night. That is what The Times caught: the walled city is still a neighbourhood, not a museum.
Three walls, three names
In Vietnamese the Citadel has three names, one for each ring of walls; in English, everything tends to be called “the Citadel”. So, for this guide: the walled city (Kinh thành) is the whole enclosure, about 520 hectares of streets, lakes and houses where people live, and where all three Thiên Ý houses stand. The Imperial City (Hoàng thành) is the palace enclosure at its centre, which you visit with a ticket. The Forbidden Purple City (Tử Cấm Thành), once the emperor’s private world, lies inside the Imperial City; little of its own wall survives, and its edge today is more a line you sense than a wall you see. You can visit the Imperial City; you can live in the walled city.
A city within the walls
The Citadel was built from 1805 and completed in 1832, under the first Nguyễn emperors: some 520 hectares inside ramparts and moats, with twenty-four bastions and ten gates. Eight villages gave up their land for it.
It was built for the state, not for the people. Around the Imperial City stood the Six Ministries, the Privy Council, the Imperial Academy, the national archive, rows of granaries along the royal canal, and the magazines of the bastions. Under Minh Mạng the gates closed at nine at night and opened at five, and loud talk in the streets was forbidden. The first princes’ residences were built inside the walls; when a prince became emperor, his house was cleared for palaces and gardens, and later residences went up along the Perfume and An Cựu rivers, where the ninety or so that survive still stand — all of them outside the walls. Officials’ houses spread through the enclosure during Tự Đức’s reign. Merchants stayed outside: Minh Mạng planned 332 shophouses along the royal canal, and most traders declined them in favour of Đông Ba market, beyond the eastern gate.
After 1945 no one governed the old enclosure. Families multiplied, garden plots were divided among heirs, wooden columns gave way to concrete, and some fifteen thousand people came to live on the ramparts themselves; they were rehoused between 2019 and 2025, and the walls are getting their line back. What survived is the scale, the lakes, the trees — and the traces you can still follow on foot.
Where to stay inside the walls
Few hotels stand inside the walls. Nothing here may rise higher than the King’s own gates, and the old plots are small and long divided among families, so only a boutique scale is possible. Among the few, one brings together what the walled city does best — old Huế houses, gardens and lotus lakes — in private pool villas and a hotel on the water, with a household to look after you, a short walk from everything below: Thiên Ý, where we live.
Thiên Ý Villas sit down a small lane off Nguyễn Thiện Thuật, inside the original walls, a few steps from Võ Sanh lake: three private pool villas — Flower House, Birds House and Beasts House — ten rooms in all, each villa with its own 12-metre infinity pool, its gardens under Ms Thu’s care, and its Quản Gia, the household butler of old Huế, looking after the life of the house.
Thiên Ý Lake opens on 1 November 2026 at 29 Nguyễn Trãi, on Hậu Vệ lake: an entrance house on the Citadel’s main street, and a principal axis unfolding across the lotus toward the mountains. Fifteen rooms and suites, every one with a full view of the water and no road between the hotel and the lake.
Manor Thiên Ý, the recreation of a Nguyễn princely household, is being built at 43 Trần Nguyên Đán and opens in 2027.
The three are five minutes’ walk from one another, and five minutes from the Imperial City. Every stop below is within the walls or at their edge; many are on our own streets.
Getting around
On foot, mostly: there is little traffic inside the walls, which makes walking, cycling and even the cyclo (xích lô) a pleasure here. Your Quản Gia will arrange a bicycle, a cyclo or a local guide; there is also the city’s public bike-share, unlocked with a phone app, with stations near the Imperial City entrance and along the river.
Morning: the Imperial City, then a coffee
The Imperial City
From home it is a short stroll to the Imperial City. Go as it opens, before the heat and the groups, and take a ticket for a proper visit. For 143 years, from 1802 to 1945, this was the seat of the Nguyễn dynasty: palaces, temples and gardens laid out on an imperial scale, which have survived wars and storms and kept their composure. Enter through the Ngọ Môn gate and walk slowly toward the Forbidden Purple City; opposite the gate, the Flag Tower (Kỳ Đài) has stood since 1807. We won’t describe the visit here: it has its guides and its books, and our subject is the city around it. If you want the stories behind the stones, our concierge can arrange a knowledgeable guide in your language.
Address: 23 Tháng 8 Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
Two coffees in a monument
Before you leave the Imperial City, stop for a coffee. Two of its pavilions serve one.
Trường Du Tạ is a water pavilion built in 1849 in the grounds of Diên Thọ Palace, the residence of the queen mothers: a square wooden hall on sixteen columns, over a small lake with koi and goldfish, where the ladies of the court came to take the cool. Look closely at its carved wooden panels: they are the ones our craftsmen took as a model for the side panels of the covered bridge at Thiên Ý Villas.
Tứ Phương Vô Sự stands on the Imperial City’s northern wall, by the Hòa Bình gate: a two-storey pavilion of about 182 square metres, rebuilt in 1923 under Emperor Khải Định in a style that mixes East Asian and European elements. Its name means “peace in all four directions”. Restored in recent years, it is now a café, a rare case of a monument simply given back to daily life, with the finest view over the Imperial City’s roofs. From inside, follow the path toward the Hòa Bình gate; it can also be reached from Đặng Thái Thân street.
This pavilion matters to us: it is one of the references behind Birds House, our villa of harmony and symmetry, where European classicism of around 1800 meets the colours of Vietnamese baroque taste.
Tứ Phương Vô Sự: by the Hòa Bình gate, Imperial City, Huế · open 6:00–22:00.
Late morning: on the traces of old Huế
Leave the Imperial City by its eastern side and walk the old quarter of the ministries. Nothing here asks for a ticket; much of it is seen from the street. Together, these buildings are what remains of the capital that worked around the palace.
The Imperial Academy (Quốc Tử Giám)
The school of the empire’s future mandarins moved here in 1908, under Emperor Duy Tân. Its great lecture hall, Di Luân Đường, still stands with its two classroom wings. The site passed to the Monuments Conservation Centre in 2025 and is being restored; look at it from the street.
Address: 1 đường 23 Tháng 8, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
Long An Palace — the Royal Antiquities Museum
Built in 1845 under Emperor Thiệu Trị, Long An Palace is one of the finest pieces of Nguyễn wooden architecture, and has been a museum since 1923. Inside are thousands of objects from the court: ceramics, enamelware, royal costumes, the things the palace actually used. It is the best place to see the refinement that the empty halls of the Imperial City only suggest.
Address: 3 Lê Trực Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
The Six Ministries (Lục Bộ)
The empire was run from here: Personnel, Rites, Finance, War, Justice and Public Works, begun under Minh Mạng in 1827 and rebuilt on a smaller scale after 1885. Of forty-two buildings, two survive — the halls of the ministers of Personnel and of Public Works. They are closed to visitors for now, but visible from Nguyễn Chí Diểu street.
Address: 79 Nguyễn Chí Diểu Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
Tam Tòa — the Privy Council, from the gate
The Privy Council (Cơ Mật Viện) was created by Minh Mạng in 1834 to advise the court on its gravest matters, military ones first. The building you see, finished in 1903, is European in form, two storeys with moon-shaped doorways — a sign of the times. It now houses the Huế Monuments Conservation Centre, the people who keep the Citadel standing. You cannot go in, but the gateway is worth the pause.
Address: 23 Tống Duy Tân Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
The garden houses
This quarter, around the old ministries, is where officials were given land for their homes, and where most of the Citadel’s garden houses (nhà vườn) still stand: a screen wall at the gate, a garden of fruit trees and ornamental plants, and at its heart a nhà rường, the timber house of Huế with its carved frame. A 2011 study still counted ninety-one traditional garden houses in the Citadel area, most of them north-east of the Imperial City. Most are private and lived in; a few can be entered.
Do not expect grandeur. The mandarins who built here were servants and representatives of the king, not a nobility: most had risen from obscurity through the examinations, and their families were expected to return to it within two generations. Laws against ostentation set what each rank could build and how richly it could decorate. So the houses are simple, and authentic: good timber, a carved frame for those who look closely, a garden kept with care. Beauty in simplicity is their character; it could be their motto.
Tịnh Gia Viên, down a lane off Lê Thánh Tôn, has kept its garden of bonsai and old apricot trees, and serves imperial-style dinners in the house. 7 kiệt 28 Lê Thánh Tôn.
The garden house at 120 Mai Thúc Loan is still a family house with its ancestral hall; look at it from the lane. Walk on along Hàn Thuyên and Đinh Tiên Hoàng and keep an eye on the gates: behind them, at 22 Hàn Thuyên or 138 Đinh Tiên Hoàng, the same order repeats — screen wall, garden, timber house — each at its own family’s scale. For the garden house at its most complete, outside the walls in Kim Long, read our piece on An Hiên.
The childhood home of Hồ Chí Minh
A few doors further along Mai Thúc Loan, the family of President Hồ Chí Minh lived from 1895 to 1901: his father Nguyễn Sinh Sắc, his mother Hoàng Thị Loan, and their two sons, Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm and Nguyễn Sinh Cung — the boy who would become President. Simple and modest, it is one of the loveliest small houses in the Citadel, and a rare chance to step inside a Huế home of that time.
Address: 158 Mai Thúc Loan Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
The royal canal (Ngự Hà)
Cross the Ngự Hà, the canal dug across the enclosure under Gia Long and Minh Mạng, 3.4 kilometres long, which once carried rice to the state granaries on its southern bank. The granaries have gone; three old stone bridges — Ngự Hà, Khánh Ninh and Vĩnh Lợi — still span it.
North of the canal, the walled city changes mood. The streets thin out, and the land opens onto lakes, small canals, vegetable plots and even a few fields, tended inside the ramparts as if the countryside had never quite been asked to leave.
The imperial archive (Tàng Thư Lâu)
On an island in Học Hải lake stands the building Minh Mạng raised in 1825 to keep the court’s records. It served for 120 years, stood empty for decades, and was restored and reopened in 2021; it now holds exhibitions and a reading room.
At the north-eastern corner of the walls, the Mang Cá fort (Trấn Bình Đài) was sealed off by the French in 1884 and stayed a military site behind a blind wall for more than a century. The army has left, and in 2026 the wall was opened for the first time.
Học Hải is the first of the Citadel’s lakes on this walk; Tịnh Tâm, the most famous, is next to it — more on the lakes below.
Further west, off the usual routes, the Altar of Soil and Grain (Đàn Xã Tắc), built in 1806, is the only altar of its kind left in Huế — a detour for the curious.
Midday: a garden lunch
Y Thảo Garden
A garden house of some 1,300 square metres built about fifty years ago in the traditional manner — screen wall, rockwork, nhà rường — with a menu drawn from imperial cuisine. The owners call it a living museum; it is also a very Huế way to spend a long lunch.
Address: 3 Thạch Hãn Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
Early afternoon: the lotus lakes
The walled city is a city of water: the moat, the royal canal, and dozens of lakes, large and small. In summer the lotus takes them over — The Times’ “lotus-filled lakes that bloom each summer” — and for a few months the flowers are the main attraction of Huế, for the people of Huế first.
The moat
Begin at the edge. The moat that runs along the ramparts, the Hộ Thành Hà, fills with lotus in season, and the walls stand behind the flowers in one long line. Walk or cycle a stretch of it in the early morning or late afternoon, when the light is low.
Tịnh Tâm, the famous one
Tịnh Tâm — “the lake of the quiet heart” — was made a royal pleasure garden in 1838. Three islands, Bồng Lai, Phương Trượng and Doanh Châu, float in the rectangle of water; their halls and pavilions have gone, and in season the lotus covers everything. It is the lake everyone photographs, and it deserves it.
Hậu Vệ, the lake of Thiên Ý Lake
Quieter, and for us the dearest: Hậu Vệ lake, on Nguyễn Trãi. This is where Thiên Ý Lake opens on 1 November. Every one of its fifteen rooms and suites looks onto the water, with no road between the hotel and the lake. In season, the lotus is not something you go out to see: it is there when you open the shutters, from the garden or from your balcony, from first light until the evening, when the flowers close.
Võ Sanh, next door to the villas
A few steps from Thiên Ý Villas, Võ Sanh lake is where, for some reason, the lotus holds on longest, well after the season has ended elsewhere. The neighbourhood cafés put their tables at the water’s edge; it is the walled city at its most local, nothing to visit, everything to watch.
Late afternoon: the coffee hours
Afternoons in the walled city belong to coffee. Low stools, a glass at arm’s length, the street going by. Huế takes this seriously, and it has its own invention: cà phê muối, salt coffee — strong black coffee under a lightly salted milk cream, salty, creamy and sweet at once.
A break by the lake, for the young ones and their parents alike
The first coffee need not take you far from the lotus. On Võ Sanh, the neighbourhood sits at the water’s edge over a sinh tố, in cafés such as Nhà Hồ — as relaxing a drink as the walled city offers. Next to it, Happy Time is a café with a children’s play area (khu vui chơi trẻ em): the children play with the children of the neighbourhood while their parents watch from the tables. It is next door to the villas, which makes it the easiest late afternoon of all. On a rainy day, Laporte CF, at 2 Nguyễn Trãi, has an indoor play area. At the villas themselves, Flower House has its own children’s pool, and our team brings out pool toys or a favourite board game when asked.
Café Noise, just down our street
For salt coffee, our own address is Café Noise, an unassuming place on Nguyễn Thiện Thuật, the street of the villas, run by young people from the neighbourhood: relaxed, a little eccentric, excellent coffee, and not a tourist in sight.
Đô Coffee, facing the Imperial City’s side gates
For a mango sinh tố, sit at Đô Coffee on Lê Huân, a quiet street along the Imperial City’s moat, facing its beautiful side gates. It is the calm alternative to the busier cafés on the other side of the Imperial City.
Hi Haven, on the Manor’s street
A wooden house in an open garden, green and quiet: a place to read, or to work for an hour if you must. It stands on Trần Nguyên Đán, a few doors from where Manor Thiên Ý is rising.
Address: 35 Trần Nguyên Đán Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
Evening: dinner, cakes, and the Citadel’s own nights
Le Jardin de Carambole — Vườn Khế
Next to the Imperial City, a classic French-style villa in a green garden: le Jardin de Carambole, or Vườn Khế, “the starfruit garden” — a bilingual name for a house with two cuisines, French and Vietnamese. A relaxed choice for a family table or a quiet evening for two.
Address: 32 Đặng Trần Côn Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
Bánh Bà Chi, on the Lake’s street
Three generations and more than sixty years of Huế cakes, from Nam Phổ, a village known for them. Four signature cakes, made from familiar local ingredients, with more care for flavour and presentation than for quantity. It is on Nguyễn Trãi, the same street as Thiên Ý Lake.
Address: 65 Nguyễn Trãi Street, Phú Xuân Ward, Huế.
Or stay in
Some evenings, the best table in the Citadel is your own. Chef Lê Vũ, from Huế, cooks private dinners in the villas: a menu discussed and shaped with you beforehand, built on wild-caught seafood from the neighbouring islands, seasonal produce from Huế’s markets, and the flavours of imperial Huế and rural Central Vietnam. For guests staying three nights or more, an evening of Music on the Bridge — Huế’s court and folk music played on our wooden bridge, with an assortment of bánh Huế — is our gift.
The Citadel’s own nights
After dinner the walled city doesn’t go out; it stays in the neighbourhood. Two of its evening habits are worth sharing, the way a neighbour would share them.
Billiards. In Vietnam billiards is less a bar game than a way of life: a bright room open onto the street, a glass of iced tea, neighbours of every age taking turns and commenting on every shot. At TOP Billiards Club, next door to the Manor’s site, rent a table for an hour and fall into the rhythm of the street. 45 Trần Nguyên Đán Street, Phú Xuân Ward.
Karaoke, the gentle kind. Here karaoke is a family affair more than a night out: a birthday, a reunion, colleagues after work. Inside the walls it keeps that gentle, local tone. At I Sing Karaoke, a private room lets your party sing among itself. 24 Lê Thánh Tôn Street, Phú Xuân Ward.
Coming home
After the walls, the lakes and the coffee, the lane off Nguyễn Thiện Thuật is quiet, five minutes from the Imperial City. The pool is lit, the Quản Gia has noticed what you might want, and the day’s Citadel is still just outside the gate. Next morning it starts again, a few streets further.
From 1 November, Thiên Ý Lake adds a hotel on Hậu Vệ lake, five minutes away; in 2027, Manor Thiên Ý, on Trần Nguyên Đán.
Looking back, the days blur into one long walk: the palace gates at opening time, a coffee in a pavilion over the koi, a canal and its stone bridges, a salt coffee on a low stool, the lotus closing on the lake at dusk, the click of billiard balls under a strip light. None of it was far. It was all inside the walls, and so were you.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between the Huế Citadel and the Imperial City?
The Citadel, or walled city (Kinh thành), is the whole enclosure of about 520 hectares, with streets, lakes and houses where people live. The Imperial City (Hoàng thành) is the palace enclosure at its centre, visited with a ticket; the Forbidden Purple City lies inside it.
Can you stay inside the Huế Citadel?
Yes, though few hotels stand inside the walls, since nothing may rise higher than the King’s gates. Thiên Ý Villas offers three private pool villas off Nguyễn Thiện Thuật; Thiên Ý Lake, a fifteen-room hotel on Hậu Vệ lake, opens on 1 November 2026.
How do you get around the walled city?
On foot, by bicycle or by cyclo: there is little traffic inside the walls. Huế also has a public bike-share, unlocked with a phone app, with stations near the Imperial City entrance and along the river.
When do the lotus lakes of the Citadel bloom?
In summer, when the lotus covers the moat and lakes such as Tịnh Tâm and Hậu Vệ. On Võ Sanh lake, next to Thiên Ý Villas, the lotus lasts well after the season has ended elsewhere.