After finishing Hue’s main imperial sites, we still had time left in the city and began looking for other places to explore.
We tend to enjoy small local museums and lesser-known sites that are not usually part of standard itineraries. They often feel more intimate and reveal unexpected details that can get lost in larger, more formal landmarks.
Museum of Royal Antiquities
One morning we visited the Hue Museum of Royal Antiquities, tucked away in quieter streets near the Imperial complex.
Before even entering the museum, we walked through a small courtyard where old cannons stood in the garden and bronze urns were lined up along the walls.
Our first surprise came at the entrance, when we were asked to remove our shoes before coming into the museum. Once inside, we quickly understood why: gleaming hardwood floors stretched throughout the building.
Long An Palace
The museum is housed inside Long An Palace, built by Emperor Thieu Tri as a place removed from the bustle and pressures of the Imperial Court. After the grandeur and formality of the Imperial Complex, it was easy to see why this beautiful yet intimate space would have appealed to an emperor who was also a renowned poet.
His verses are still inscribed on the wooden beams, walls, and decorative panels, preserving his literary legacy throughout the palace itself.
Aside from the poems, there were royal objects from the Nguyen court: furniture, ceramics, clothing, lacquerware, and decorative objects that gave a more personal sense of life inside the imperial palace.
One object especially caught my attention — a Tou-hu game favored by Emperor Tu Duc, who was known to be quite skilled at it.
A nearby illustration explained the rules: players had to throw arrows so they bounced off a platform and landed inside a narrow-necked pot. It looked incredibly difficult and seemed to require remarkable precision.
It was one of those details that briefly made the imperial court feel human rather than distant.
The museum itself was relatively small and we finished fairly quickly. Afterwards we wandered back into the gardens to look more closely at the cannons and discovered another pavilion nearby.
Emperor Ham Nghi
Inside was an exhibition dedicated to Emperor Ham Nghi. His story turned out to be one of the most fascinating we encountered in Hue.
He ascended the throne as a teenager shortly before the French fully consolidated control over Vietnam. When Hue fell, loyal mandarins smuggled him out of the city and he became the symbolic leader of a resistance movement against the French occupation.
For several years he remained a figurehead of this struggle before eventually being betrayed, captured, and exiled to Algeria.
And there, unexpectedly, an entirely different life began.
He studied painting, became associated with artistic circles in France, exhibited his work publicly, and even studied with Auguste Rodin.
Some of his paintings were displayed in the museum and they were genuinely impressive.
It was difficult not to be fascinated by the strange trajectory of his life: emperor, resistance symbol, political exile, and finally artist.
Champa Sculptures
But the museum still had one more surprise waiting for us.
Further inside the gardens stood another small pavilion housing Champa sculptures.
They looked completely different from anything else we had seen in Vietnam so far — different faces, forms, symbolism, and artistic style. We wandered slowly through the room studying them, surprised by this first unexpected encounter with the legacy of the Champa civilization.
It left us eager to learn more once we continued south toward Hoi An and Da Nang.
Practical Tips – Museum of Royal Antiquities
- Opening hours: 7:00 am – 5:30 pm
- Entry fee: 50,000 VND per person
- Be sure to explore beyond the main palace building — additional exhibits are easy to miss, as there is very little signage directing you to them.
An Hien Garden House
A few days later we walked along the Perfume River to visit An Hien Garden House.
Compared to the imperial spaces we had seen earlier, this place immediately felt smaller in scale and far more personal.
As we entered through an ornate stone gate into the garden, we were greeted by a young woman in a traditional ao dai.
She welcomed us into the house and served jasmine tea from an antique tea set while telling us about the history of the property.
We learned that the house had originally been built by Emperor Duc Duc as a wedding gift for one of his daughters. Later it passed into private ownership and changed hands several times.
Architecture and Feng Shui
The house itself is over a hundred years old and built entirely from wood without using nails. The craftsmanship was remarkable — wooden beams and panels fitted together with incredible precision.
We also learned about some of the feng shui principles used in its design. The entrance faces south, while a wall and pond in front of the house are meant to bring balance and good fortune.
One symbol carved into the central wall represented longevity. After learning its meaning here, we began noticing the same symbol repeatedly in other places throughout Vietnam.
Family Ancestors
There was a small altar in the main room with old photographs of the last house owners and their ancestors.
In temples, the ancestors we had seen were official historical figures — emperors, scholars, mandarins.
Here, they were ordinary family members: parents, grandparents, and other relatives who had passed away.
Until then, we had not known that ancestor worship in Vietnam extends into private homes, directed toward one’s own family.
It was fascinating to see this practice exist in both public, state-oriented spaces and in private family settings.
Practical Tips – An Hien Garden House
- Opening hours: 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
- Entry fee: 50,000 VND per person
- Occasionally, traditional music performances take place on-site, usually starting around 9:00 am.
Perfume River Ancient Pottery and Ms. Thai Kim Lan
Our next stop was a small private museum called “Perfume River Ancient Pottery.” Unexpectedly, it became one of the highlights of our Hue visit.
A Confusing Arrival
From the moment we arrived, it felt unusual.
There was no ticket counter at the entrance, and the place did not look like a museum at all — more like someone’s garden and private house.
At first, we even wondered if we had the right place.
We walked through the old garden toward a wooden building and saw people eating lunch inside one of the rooms. For a moment, I was completely confused — was this a museum, a restaurant, or simply someone’s home?
Carefully, we began to move through a few rooms, trying to understand what kind of place this actually was.
Meeting Ms. Thai
Then we noticed a small group of visitors speaking with an elegant Vietnamese woman dressed in red. On the wall nearby hung a large photograph of the same woman, clearly taken many years earlier.
After the group left, I approached her and started a conversation — and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of our entire stay in Hue.
Her name was Thai Kim Lan.
She spoke English, French, and German, and had spent more than forty years living in Germany before eventually returning to Vietnam.
What followed was less a sightseeing tour than an extended conversation.
More Personal Than a Museum
She showed us around what was not only a museum, but also her ancestral family home — a traditional wooden building over two hundred years old.
She and her brother had spent decades collecting pottery recovered from the Perfume River, preserving fragments of everyday life from centuries past.
But the pottery itself became only part of the story.
As she guided us through the house, she told stories about her family, ancestors who had served as mandarins in the imperial court, and life in Hue across generations.
She showed us beautiful objects that had belonged to members of the royal family, including a finely decorated wooden bed with mother-of-pearl inlay and an elegant dessert set stored inside a carved wooden case.
Some of these pieces, she explained, had been acquired at auctions in Saigon, chosen specifically because she wanted to preserve fragments of Vietnamese history.
In one of the rooms, Valery noticed a raised wooden platform and asked Ms. Thai whether it was a bed or a table. She explained that it was both: used as a bed at night and as a table during the day, with bedding stored away in the traditional Vietnamese way.
She then showed us how to sit there and invited Valery to join her, while I took a photo of the moment.
She also brought us into the family shrine, where several altars were dedicated to different generations of her ancestors.
Seeing these spaces up close while listening to her stories made the past feel unusually personal and alive.
This was no longer history presented on signs or through audio guides.
It was history embodied by a person.
We left feeling genuinely privileged to have spent time with her in that remarkable house.
Practical Tips – Perfume River Antique Pottery Museum
- Opening hours: 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
- Entry fee: 120,000 VND per person
- At the end of the visit, they offer complimentary tea and sweets
- You can also have a traditional lunch there, but it needs to be arranged in advance. We only found out about this during our visit — something we wish we had known earlier
Farewell from the Flag Tower
Before leaving Hue for Hoi An, we walked around the Imperial City walls for the last time. We climbed the Flag Tower and one of the gates beside it.
From above, we could see the city stretching outward: the walls and canals, the river, the older neighborhoods, and the newer districts beyond.
After three weeks, Hue’s layout no longer felt confusing. What had first seemed fragmented and difficult to understand had become familiar.
We had come to Hue for its imperial monuments and history. Instead, we found a city where daily life was equally engaging: walks along the canals, conversations in markets and museums, evenings by the river, and glimpses of ordinary life continuing among the remains of empire.
As we looked out across the city from the Flag Tower, it felt less like a place we had simply visited and more like a place we had lived in.
“I cannot believe three weeks are gone already,” said Valery. “We could have stayed here for much longer.”
I could not agree more.
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