The Citadel That Refused a Single Reality

Hanoi’s citadel has been rebuilt, looted, moved, and partly erased, yet it still refuses to die. It began as a Chinese fortress, then in 1010 the ruler moved his capital there after seeing a dragon omen on the Red River, and it remained Vietnam’s political heart for almost 1,000 years. Later another dynasty shifted power to Huế and reused materials from the old citadel, and the French more or less finished the job in the late 1800s by demolishing most of it for barracks and offices.

What’s left feels like a dignified ruin that knows it used to matter. You can still see the Flag Tower, the cannon‑scarred North Gate, the main gate, the former palace platform with stone dragons, a so‑called “Princess’ Palace,” sections of old walls and gates, and an underground war bunker. Archaeologists nearby keep uncovering palace foundations and fragments, which helped turn the site into a UNESCO World Heritage area, even though at first glance it looks like “some gates, a flag tower, and a lot of empty space.”

This makes my photograph oddly fitting: a real image on historic Orwo film that has survived its own small saga. First the film was mishandled and accidentally double‑exposed, then I mis‑set the film speed on the camera, and in the final act a local lab misunderstood it and developed it as black and white, after which the negative had to be painstakingly rescued, as if it insisted on telling the story anyway. While I was photographing this, I somehow managed to lose my wallet, only for it to turn up later in my hotel’s garage, where I had taken my bicycle before cycling to the citadel, so taking this photo became a miniature version of its history: things get lost, nearly erased, and yet somehow find their way back into the narrative.