Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum is one of Vietnam's most important and visited sites. You can see a video and then (most of the year) the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh in a glass coffin, dressed in khaki and rubber shoes.

Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) was born Nguyen Tat Thanh in the village of Kimlien, Annam in Central Vietnam. Like his father, he protested against French colonial rule and would eventually become the principal force behind the Vietnamese struggle for independence. He helped to found the Communist-dominated independence movement, known as the Vietminh, when Japan occupied Vietnam in 1941.

Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, the Vietminh seized power and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh, as he was now known, became president. War with France followed for eight years until the French surrendered in Dien Bien Phu in 1954. With just the north under the communist state, conflict returned in the 1960s as the DRV fought against the US-supported regime in Saigon.

Ho Chi Minh didn't see the end of the war as he died of heart failure in 1969. When the communists finally took the south in 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, but the mausoleum in Hanoi had already been built (1973-1975).