Editorials
Hanoi Is Still Treated as a Stopover, and Its Thousand-Year-Old Old Quarter Deserves Longer
Hanoi's Old Quarter has functioned as a working commercial district, organised street by street along old guild lines, since the eleventh century, yet most itineraries still give it only a night or two either side of Halong Bay.
By BigTravel.in Editorial Team · · 2 min read
Hanoi is routinely treated as a stopover: a night or two before or after Halong Bay, a stamp on the way to Ho Chi Minh City. That undersells a city whose Old Quarter has been continuously inhabited and commercially active for close to a thousand years, since Emperor Ly Thai To moved his capital here in 1010 and tradesmen from across the region followed, forming guilds that each took a single street.
Thirty-six streets, still mostly true to type
The Old Quarter's nickname, the 36 streets, refers to the guild system that grew up under the Ly and later Le dynasties, when each street, prefixed Hang, meaning shop or goods, specialised in a single trade. A fair number still do: Hang Bac deals in silver and jewellery, Hang Gai in silk, Hang Ma in paper offerings and festival goods. The pattern is not a curated heritage display; it is simply how the neighbourhood has continued to function.
A university that predates most of Europe's
The Temple of Literature, founded in 1070 and dedicated to Confucius, held the Imperial Academy from 1076, generally considered Vietnam's first national university. Its courtyards and stone stelae, engraved with the names of doctoral graduates from imperial exams, sit a short distance from the Old Quarter and are usually far quieter than the streets around Hoan Kiem Lake.
Why it keeps losing out to its neighbours
Halong Bay's karst islands and Ho Chi Minh City's scale and pace both photograph and market themselves more easily than a dense, low-rise old quarter built for foot traffic rather than skylines. Hanoi's French colonial-era boulevards around the Opera House add a different, calmer layer again, one that most itineraries skip entirely in favour of moving straight through to the coast or south. None of that makes the Old Quarter or the Temple of Literature lesser stops; it just means most visitors currently give them less time than they reward.
Traveller tips
- Noi Bai International Airport sits around 45 minutes from central Hanoi by road.
- The Old Quarter is best explored on foot; traffic is dense and pavements often double as shop displays or parking.
- The Temple of Literature closes on a rotating schedule around public holidays; checking ahead avoids a wasted trip.
- Street-food stalls in the Old Quarter generally specialise in one or two dishes rather than offering a full menu, in keeping with the area's older guild pattern.
Where this is
Hanoi, Vietnam
