Hanoi keeps its culture in layers: Đông Sơn bronzes under colonial ceilings, ca trù sung in a Hàng Buồm shophouse, kilns still firing at Bát Tràng. Three days built around galleries, stages and craft streets rather than the postcard circuit.
Two colonial buildings on Nguyễn Thái Học hold some 20,000 works: Đông Sơn bronzes, 11th-century Buddhist sculpture, and the silk and lacquer paintings of Nguyễn Phan Chánh and Nguyễn Gia Trí. Open 08:30–17:00 daily.
Vietnam's first university, founded 1070 and teaching until 1779. Five walled courtyards lead past the Khuê Văn Các pavilion to 82 stone stelae on turtle backs, each carved with the names of doctoral graduates from 1442 onward.
Finished in 1911, it copies Paris's Palais Garnier at roughly two-thirds scale: 870 seats, Italian marble staircase, mirrored salon. Daytime guided architecture tours run on set days; otherwise a concert ticket is the way inside.
Built 1899–1902 by Daydé & Pillé as a cantilever span 2.4 km long, bombed repeatedly between 1967 and 1972, and still carrying trains, motorbikes and walkers on its visibly patched sections above the Red River sandbanks.
All 54 recognised ethnic groups are covered across a drum-shaped indoor hall and an outdoor garden of full-scale rebuilt houses — a 19 m Bahnar communal roof, an Ê Đê longhouse, a Giáy stilt home. Open 08:30–17:30, closed Mondays.
A 1930s villa on Phan Huy Ích running as gallery, café and small press since 2012 — contemporary Vietnamese painting, video and artist books downstairs, talks and experimental music upstairs. The Ngõ Hàng Bún annexe takes larger installations.
Four floors on Lý Thường Kiệt covering marriage and birth customs, wartime roles, and the Đạo Mẫu Mother Goddess religion, plus a strong collection of ethnic-minority dress and a street-vendor photo essay near the top. Open 08:00–17:00.
Ca trù, the UNESCO-listed chamber song of the north, performed in a narrow shophouse by the Phạm family: one singer keeping time on phách clappers, a đàn đáy lute, and a praise drum answering from the audience side. About 30 seats.
A pottery village on the Red River's left bank since the 14th century, 13 km southeast of the Old Quarter. The covered market sells seconds by the crate; the lanes behind it are the real thing — coal-cinder walls drying, kilns firing, wheels turning.
The French-built covered market of 1889, rebuilt after the 1994 fire — three floors of fabric, haberdashery, thread and dried goods sold wholesale. Ngõ Đồng Xuân along its north side is the food alley for bún riêu and bánh tôm.
A restored 19th-century merchant's tube house — 28 m deep, two light courtyards, ironwood posts and a mezzanine ancestral altar — conserved with the city of Toulouse in 1999. Pair it with Đình Kim Ngân, the silversmiths' communal house.
Hanoi's oldest pagoda, founded in 541 under Lý Nam Đế and moved to this West Lake islet in 1615. The 11-tier red stupa carries a seated Amitābha in each of its 66 niches, beside a bodhi tree grown from a Bodh Gaya cutting given in 1959.