People's Committee Building (formerly City Hall)--page 1 (of two pages)

Note: these pictures were taken on two different days; thus the entrance looks different.
	View from a distance with statue of Ho Chi Minh--additional views of the statue The French colonists, who occupied Vietnam, wanted to feel at home. Not only did they import their culture, religion, and food, but they imported French architectural styles as well. Cathedrals, like Notre Dame in Ho Chi Minh City and St. Joseph's in Hanoi, imitate French Romanesque and Gothic ecclesiastical styles. Numerous villas of French design border spacious avenues, also of French lineage. The Post Office in Ho Chi Minh City was designed by Gustave Eiffel. (A copy of his tower was erected in Dalat, a Vietnamese town favored by colonists for vacations.) This civic building, originally the City Hall, was modelled on a similar building in Paris. See this site for a photograph of the Paris Hôtel de Ville (or city hall). The Paris City Hall was rebuilt after the 16th century original building was set to fire during the 1870 Parisian revolution.
Like the Paris City Hall, this long building has a dramatic central section with two mansard-roofed pavilions flanking a highly decorated central area topped by a tall clock tower.
		The central section Allegorical sculptural groupings decorate the broken pediments of both the side pavilions and the center.

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