Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi

The hotel now known as the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi opened in 1901 under French colonial rule as the Hotel Metropole, built by French investors in a Neoclassical colonial style to serve the colonial administrators and travelers of French Indochina's capital. The hotel became closely associated with a series of prominent literary and political visitors across the twentieth century, including the writer Graham Greene, who stayed there while working on his novel The Quiet American, and the actress Jane Fonda, who stayed at the hotel during a visit to Hanoi in 1972 in the midst of the Vietnam War. During renovation work in 2011, staff rediscovered a concrete bomb shelter beneath the hotel's Bamboo Bar, built during the war to protect guests and staff during American bombing raids on the city and sealed off from use for decades afterward. The hotel operated under various names and managements through Vietnam's colonial, wartime and post-reunification periods before its historic wing was carefully restored and rebranded under its present Sofitel management. Its colonial-era wing, with its shuttered windows, wraparound verandas and central courtyard, remains one of the best-preserved examples of French colonial hotel architecture in Southeast Asia.