Saigon Central Post Office

Built 1886 – 1891 by Vildieu and Foulhoux, with an Eiffel steel roof vault, and still a working post office

The best thing about this building is that it has never stopped working. More than one hundred and thirty years after its opening, it is still a real post office, where people come to send letters and buy stamps – only now with a stream of visitors coming and going every day as well. The 26,000 m² building was begun on 14 November 1886 and completed in 1891, designed by French architect Henri Auguste Vildieu with his assistant Marie-Alfred Foulhoux in a Baroque and European Classical style. The interior steel roof vault and the building's steel materials were designed and produced by the Gustave Eiffel company. Since its construction, the main building has retained its original design. The building has three levels – a basement, a ground floor and an upper floor – in a balanced layout symmetrical about a central axis. The main entrance is arched, with a relief of the god Mercury, symbol of human communication, encircled by a laurel wreath at its centre. A highlight is the antique clock on the arch, made in the late 19th century. Inside, the lobby ceiling is formed of intersecting vaults, and the joints between the columns and iron trusses are elaborately decorated, in an arrangement reminiscent of the Gare d'Orsay in Paris. A few details often go unnoticed. In the middle of the lobby, the names of 35 renowned scientists – Volta, Ampere, Ohm, Watt, Bell, Morse – are inscribed on decorated enamelled porcelain plaques. On both sides of the facade, rectangular panels bear the names of inventors in telegraphy and electricity: Francois Arago, Alessandro Volta, Benjamin Franklin, Michael Faraday. And just inside the main entrance, on the right is a map of Saigon and its surroundings from 1892, and on the left a map of Cochinchina from 1936, both painted in oil directly on the wall – over a century later, their colours are still vivid. In front of the lobby stand two monuments erected for the 300th anniversary of Saigon – Ho Chi Minh City: on the left, the monument to the Postal and Communications Soldiers; on the right, a statue representing the Post Office in the era of modern development. In 2023, Architectural Digest named it one of the 11 most beautiful post offices in the world. The building is just a few steps from Notre-Dame Cathedral, the two together forming the most familiar pair of landmarks in the City centre. You can stroll the route Turtle Lake – City Post Office – Notre-Dame Cathedral – Independence Palace.

English text: machine translation from the Localis platform — proper names kept in Vietnamese.