Photo tour of the Imperial Citadel of Hue

[firth1974 2,659]

The Imperial Citadel of Hue.

Most of it is now more than a huge pile of rubble, due to the fact that the VC during the Tet Offensive hid out here, and it got turned to rubble after the Americans tried to flush them out. You can only imagine what this place looked like in its hay day of the Emperor's.

The grounds of the Imperial City were surrounded by a wall 2 kilometers by 2 kilometers, and the walls were surrounded by a moat. The water from the moat was taken from the Huong River (Perfume River) that flows through Huế. This structure is called the citadel. Inside the citadel was the Imperial City, with a perimeter of almost 2.5 kilometers. Inside the Imperial City was the imperial enclosure called the Purple Forbidden City in Vietnamese, a term similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing. The enclosure was reserved for the Nguyễn imperial family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_City,_Hu%E1%BA%BF

[firth1974 2,659]

[firth1974 2,659]