In the framework of Hanoi millennium celebrations held in October 2010, Île-de-France Region’s General Cultural Heritage Inventory Department and IMV prepared a special issue of the series Images du patrimoine featuring Hanoi.

Virginie Malherbe, a trainee from the National Heritage Institute under the region’s Heritage and Inventory Department, completed a detailed study of Hanoi’s colonial villas (surveys, compendium of historical and iconographic information) and a research paper on the history of the city based on sources available in France and Vietnam (travel diaries, Hanoi guidebooks, scientific works). The photographs illustrating the book were taken by Stéphane Asseline (Heritage and Inventory Department of IdF Region).

The book covers the history of construction of colonial Hanoi between 1880 and 1954 based on a reading of old postcards. It goes on to review the outstanding monumental and architectural heritage that reflected the political ambition of having Hanoi’s influence reach throughout French Indochina. The book also has a significant section dealing with habitat forms. The colonial villa—a symbol of the French way of life, later widely appropriated by the Vietnamese elite—underwent a wide range of architectural variants that continue to add their charm to the Old French Quarter.