The President Ho Chi Minh Relic Site in Hanoi is exhibiting many documentary photos about his daily life to mark his 55th death anniversary on Sept. 2. The site used to be the Presidential Palace where Ho Chi Minh lived and worked for 15 years from 1954 until he died in 1969.
The relic site comprises of three houses House No. 54, the Stilt House and House No. 67.
In the above photo, President Ho works at House No.54, where he lived from 1954 to 1958.
According to the memoirs of Vu Ky, his personal secretary for 24 years, when Ho Chi Minh returned to Hanoi for the second time after victory in the war against the French, he stayed in the house that had three small rooms and used to belong to an electrician.
Ho Chi Minh is with a visiting delegation from the Communist Party of China on the second floor of his stilt house in September 1960.
Besides workers, farmers, intellectuals, military officials, ethnic people, and visitors from the south, Ho Chi Minh also met with heads of state and other foreign delegates.
Ho Chi Minh poses for a photo in May 1958 with combat engineers who built his stilt house. After living for four years at House 54, Ho Chi Minh moved to the stilt house opposite the fish pond.
The two-story wooden house with a tiled roof was designed by architect Nguyen Van Ninh, former deputy director of the Ministry of Transport and Irrigation’s department of architectural design. The construction was carried out by the army.
It is in the style of traditional stilt houses in Viet Bac, the northernmost region of Vietnam that now consists of the six provinces of Cao Bang, Bac Kan, Lang Son, Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang, and Thai Nguyen.
President Ho Chi Minh and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong receive the first delegation from the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam to visit the North Vietnam in October 1962.
The two leaders lived together in the presidential palace. They often ate together, walked and discussed work, according to the memoirs.
This photo taken on Dec. 28, 1967, shows Ho Chi Minh attending a meeting of the Party Central Committee’s Politburo, approving the decision to launch the 1968 Tet Offensive.
Ho Chi Minh takes care of a star apple tree people in the south gifted him. In winter he would wrap straw around its trunk to protect it from the northern cold.
The pond between House 54 and the stilt house was where Ho Chi Minh often fed fish after work in the late afternoon before taking a walk and having dinner.
Ho Chi Minh watches his staff catch a 24-kg fish in the pond sometime in May 1969.
According to the memoirs, during this time Ho Chi Minh’s health deteriorated but continued to do exercise.
At 5:30 a.m. on his birthday on May 19, 1969, when staff brought their children to greet him, they saw Ho Chi Minh sitting at a table and throwing balls into a basket in a corner to exercise.
Ho Chi Minh and children enjoy a performance on the occasion of International Children's Day in May 1969. During his 24 years as President he wrote letters to children almost every year on this day.
After Ho Chi Minh’s death, the Politburo decided to preserve the artifacts at the Presidential Palace.
In the photo, Ky (L) tells soldiers to move documents and artifacts to safety before the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam.
Army units building President Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum visit the Presidential Palace Relic Site in 1975.
An official of the Guard Department, who used to work as Ho Chi Minh's barber, sets up tools to reenact the past for a photo shoot in March 1976.
A clock stopped at 9:47 a.m. and a wall calendar showing Sept 2, 1969, the time and day he died, are among the artifacts that remain 55 years after Ho Chi Minh passed away.
In 2009 the Ho Chi Minh Relic Site at the Presidential Palace was declared a special national relic.
The place, at No. 1 Hoang Hoa Tham Street, Ba Dinh District, has so far received nearly 72.9 million Vietnamese visitors and more than 16.5 million foreigners.
