Reunification Palace

Vietnamese landmark building in Ho Chi Minh City, i.e. Saigon, built on the site of the former Norodom Palace and also known as Independence Palace. In 1868, a residence was built here for the French Governor-General of Indochina which gradually expanded to become the Norodom Palace, named after the then king of Cambodia, at that time a part of French Indochina. When the French in 1954 departed from Vietnam, after their defeat in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (Điện Biên Phủ - fig.), the palace became home to the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was so unpopular that in 1962 his own air force bombed the palace in an unsuccessful attempt to kill him. As a result, the president ordered the palace rebuilt, now with a bomb shelter in the basement, yet he was killed by his own troops in 1963 before the building was completed, i.e. in 1966. When Saigon in April 1975 fell to the Communists, North Vietnamese Army tanks (fig.) on 30 April 1975 crashed through the iron gates (fig.) and the flag of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, i.e. the VC flag (fig.), was placed on the balcony of the Palace's Salon of the Four Cardinal Directions (fig.), just 43 hours after General Duong Van Minh (Dương Văn Minh) had become head of the South Vietnamese state. Besides the modest residential area, the palace features several substantial halls and quarters, including the presidential office, the cabinet room, a conference hall, a state banqueting hall, the vice-president's reception salon, the national security council chamber, presidential reception rooms, the ambassadors chamber. The furniture and especially the many large carpets that decorate these places, are rife of Chinese-Vietnamese symbolism that has been crafted into them (fig.). See MAP and TRAVEL PICTURES (1), (2) and (3). 回