Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History

The Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History stands at 2 Nguyen Binh Khiem in District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, at the entrance to the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens. The building was constructed in 1929 for the Society of Indochinese Studies and the Blanchard de la Brosse Museum, and combines French colonial design with Vietnamese and Chinese motifs, notably an octagonal tiled roof. The museum was reorganised after 1975 as the history museum of the southern region and is the best place to see the pre-colonial layers of southern Vietnam. Its collections cover the period from prehistoric times to the 20th century. Galleries display stone tools, bronze drums, and ceramics from Vietnamese and other Asian kilns, together with sculpture, jewellery and inscriptions from the Oc Eo culture of the Mekong Delta, associated with the Funan kingdom of the first to sixth centuries. A large collection of Cham sculpture in sandstone includes Hindu deities and dancers, and Khmer pieces from Angkor-period art are also exhibited. Other galleries address the Nguyen dynasty and the colonial period, with royal court costumes, furniture and weapons. A rare Egyptian mummy and a set of items from Southeast Asian cultures stand in a separate hall. The curatorial approach is chronological and by culture, with labels in Vietnamese and English in the main galleries. A water puppet theatre next to the building offers regular performances of traditional Vietnamese water puppetry. The museum has been refurbished several times and its displays and building are in fair to good condition.