The French Quarter spreads west and north from the Opera House along Tran Phu, Dien Bien Phu, and Quang Trung streets. It was laid out by the French colonial administration in the early twentieth century and has the wide pavements, planted boulevards, and ochre stucco villas typical of Indochinese colonial planning.
Many of the buildings have lost their grandeur — partition into apartments, peeling paint, satellite dishes on the balconies — but the bones are extraordinary, and there are pockets of restored buildings that hint at what the whole quarter once looked like. The best way to see it is on foot or by bicycle in the early morning before the heat builds.