The Hanoi Metropolis Hotel is imposing, on a corner in the city center, covered with a bright white with well-groomed black bearers. When guests arrive at the French colonial building, they are received by employees dressed in chic silk tunics.
Framed photographs throughout the atrium show some of the hotel’s most famous guests, from the French presidents François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac, writer Graham Greene, actress Jane Fonda, and the Mute Charlie Chaplin movie star. In 2019, Metropole welcomed US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to a summit.
But under the elegant tile floors, there is another layer of history, darker.
Vietnam this week marks the 50th anniversary of reunification and the hotel – now called Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi – is highlighting its war inheritance.
April 30, 2025 marks half a century since the sign’s fall and the helicopter evacuation of the US ambassador Graham Martin, ending the so -called Vietname War – which the Vietnamese nicknamed American war.
Although most of the major formal anniversary events – such as a military stop and the inauguration of an airport terminal – are held at the South Metropolis, the city of Ho Chi Minh (former Saigão), Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, has a lot of history to share.
Metropolis was inaugurated in 1901, when Vietname was under French control. He passed several owners until he was acquired by the Communist government in the 1950s and renamed Reunification Hotel.
He was one of the few hotels authorized to host foreign visitors during the war, so many famous politicians, journalists and artists passed by.
In 1965, the hotel built an underground bunker where guests could take shelter during US air strikes. According to the hotel director, Anthony Slewka, the space was capable of about 100 people – approximately the same number of guests – and was divided into four cameras with two access points.
After the war, the bunker was forgotten – until 2011, when a construction company that was remodeling the hotel’s Bamboo Bar rediscovered it.
Currently, Metropole offers two daily visits to the Bunker to the hotel guests at 17:00 and 18:00 hours.
While in the bunker, visitors can observe the original lamps and other accessories while listening to Joan Baez’s song “Where Are You Now, My Son?”, Which the singer recorded precisely while staying in the metropolis. The song incorporates music, spoken words, clips of a Vietnamese woman shouting for her son and the sound of air raid sirens.
Baez spent some time in Bunker during his Vietnam visits and describes how he became a peace activist after seeing the effects of war on people.
The Hanoi History
The front view of Sofitel Legend Metropolis Hanoi (courtesy: Sofitel Legend Metropolis Hanoi)
Tourists who visit Hanoi and who want to know more about the time of the war can also visit Hoa Lo prison, where US prisoners have been detained – including late Senator John McCain. Nicknamed “Hanoi Hilton”, he was converted into a multimedia museum and has materials in English.
However, the Vietname Military History Museum in Hanoi is the largest museum in the country, after a restructuring in the fall of 2024. The outside section exhibits airplanes, tanks, rockets and artillery that were used by the US military during the war.
Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed body, the revolutionary who led the North-Vietnamese Army and later became president of Vietname, is exposed to the public in a large building in downtown Hanoi.
The mausoleum is within a short distance from the presidential palace complex, where is the traditional wooden stilts house where Ho Chi Minh lived.
“Look at the future”
Currently, the Americans are the main guests of Metropolis, according to the hotel director, Slewka. Some are war veterans and want to return to review the country, but others are postwar young people who are simply interested in Vietname’s food, culture and landscapes.
According to Vietnamese government data, the US is the fourth largest source of international tourists and the largest market outside Asia, with 717,000 US tourists traveling to Vietname in 2023 alone.
Although guided tours of the Metropolis bunker are popular among guests, Slewka says most of the questions they ask him go beyond their own structure. “Most of the time, they want to know whether or not they like Americans here.”
Slewka, who was born in the US and grew up in Canada, always gives the same answer. “Vietnamites are very facing the future. They are looking at the future.”
