French Quarter

Step away from the silk lanterns and ancient wooden houses for a moment, because Hoi An has another architectural story to tell. Welcome to the French Quarter, centered along Phan Boi Chau Street, where colonial-era villas with wrought-iron balconies, tall shuttered windows, and cascading bougainvillea offer a completely different visual rhythm from the Chinese and Japanese influenced Ancient Town. France's presence in Vietnam began in the mid-nineteenth century and lasted until 1954. When the French established control over central Vietnam, Hoi An became part of a network of colonial administrative centers. The French officials, merchants, and missionaries who settled here built homes in the European style they knew, but adapted to the tropical climate with high ceilings, covered verandas, and thick walls designed to keep interiors cool. Phan Boi Chau Street is named after one of Vietnam's most important anti-colonial revolutionaries, a man who spent decades organizing resistance against French rule. There is a quiet irony in the fact that his name now graces a street lined with the very colonial architecture his movement opposed. But that is Hoi An in a nutshell, a town that absorbs every layer of its history without erasing what came before. The buildings here...