The Hanoi Opera House is a scaled-down copy of the Palais Garnier in Paris, built between 1901 and 1911 at the height of French colonial ambition. The exterior is a confident statement of Beaux-Arts classicism — columns, balconies, arched windows, green copper roof — dropped into the middle of a city that would spend the following decades dismantling everything it represented. It sits at the eastern end of Trang Tien Street, one of the central axes of the French Quarter, and still commands the square in front of it.
The Opera House was restored in the 1990s and continues to host classical concerts, opera, and ballet. Getting inside requires either buying a ticket to a performance (recommended — the hall is beautiful) or joining one of the occasional daytime tours. The exterior is worth seeing regardless: it anchors the French Quarter architecturally and the surrounding blocks, with their preserved colonial-era ministries and hotels including the Metropole, give the best sense of what the French quarter looked like at its peak. The square in front of it is a pleasant place to sit in the early evening.