Museum of Ho Chi Minh City

This guide to the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City opens on a November night in 1963, when two brothers slipped through a hidden door beneath this Baroque former governor's palace and vanished underground. It traces the building's path from French trade museum to the wartime residence of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who had a meter-thick bunker and three escape tunnels built beneath the floors after distrusting his own army. Workers spent over a year pouring that concrete, carving rooms four meters down that engineers claimed could survive a five hundred kilogram bomb.