Hanoi Flagtower

This guide to the Hanoi Flagtower follows one structure through the demolition of the old Thang Long citadel: built by the Nguyen dynasty in the early eighteen hundreds as a lookout tower, then spared in 1896 while French engineers dynamited nearly every gate, palace and rampart around it. You'll hear why the French found the tower useful rather than worth preserving, how they used its small octagonal room to coordinate campaigns across Indochina, and what happened at the base of that same flagpole after the August Revolution of 1945. Climb the fifty-four spiral steps and you're following the same route French officers once used to scan the roads into the city.