|
On the Banks of the Perfume River
 Almost
at the dividing line between North and South Vietnam sits
the city of Hué, once the imperial capital of the first dynasty
to unite the country and Vietnam's last emperor. 142 years
before Emperor Bao-Dai abdicated - after Ho Chi Minh's declaration
of Independence in 1945 - his predecessor and Nguyen dynasty
founder, Gia Long, finally brought 200 years of civil war
to an end. He united the two disparate ends of his kingdom
with the construction of the Mandarin Highway (now Highway
1), connecting the North with the South, and decreed that
a magnificent royal capital would be built at the point where
the two cultures met - Hué
Rivalling - and somewhat modeled upon - the Forbidden City
in Beijing, the three enclosures of the Royal Citadel spread
across six square kilometres. The compound is enclosed within
walls ten metres thick, which took 20,000 men to complete.
At the Citadel's centre is the lavish Imperial Palace where
once no-one but the emperor, his concubines and eunuchs were
admitted.
The Citadel has since fallen on hard times, floods in the
19th century caused severe damage to many of the wooden structures,
which have also suffered the ravages of termites and dry rot.
The massive exterior walls and ornate gateways - as well as
many of the buildings within the Citadel - were casualties
of a pitched battle between US and NVA forces during the 1968
Tet Offensive. Those wounds are now slowly being repaired,
with financial aid and technical support from UNESCO, which
declared Hué a World Heritage Site in 1993.
|
