Imperial Citadel of Thang Long

This guide to the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long moves between two layers nine centuries apart: a concrete war room built in 1967, where generals Vo Nguyen Giap and Van Tien Dung worked in March 1975 as the Politburo debated its final offensive, and the palace foundations beneath and around it, laid when Emperor Ly Thai To founded the citadel in 1010. Diggers preparing ground for a new parliament building found palace floors, wells, and roof tiles stacked from dynasty after dynasty, including a fifteenth-century staircase flanked by carved stone dragons.