2VG4+5G4, P. Lý Thái Tổ, French Quarter, Hoàn Kiếm, Hanoi, Vietnam
Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi is a five-star historic luxury hotel, opened in 1901 as the Grand Métropole Hotel in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Today, it is one of the most important buildings in Vietnam in the French colonial style. The hotel currently has 364 rooms.
In 1899, Gustave-Émile Dumoutier applied for the conversion of buildings on his land at the corner of Henri Rivière Boulevard into a hotel. Additional capital of 500,000 francs was provided by businessman André Ducamp. The Grand Métropole Hotel was opened in August 1901 by André Ducamp and Gustave-Émile Dumoutier, managed by Cie Française Immobilière.
On August 2, 1904, Gustave-Émile Dumoutier, partner of André Ducamp, passed away.
The hotel was managed by a professional manager, the Frenchman Édouard Lyon. Visitors considered it “luxurious, though expensive accommodation.” By 1916, the Metropole became the first place in Indochina to show films. In 1930 and 1934, the global economic downturn hit the colony. By that time, the French company Métropole Immobilière had become a hotel network managing properties in Tam Dao (Hotel de la Cascade d’Argent), in Doson (Grand Hotel de Doson), ‘dining cars’ on trains between Hanoi and Vinh–Hue–Turan, Grand Hotel de Chapa (at 1750 m altitude, 325 km from Hanoi in the Tonkin Pyrenees), and the “Troika of Marshals” hotel in Lang Son (Tonkin).
In 1946, the French owners sold the Metropole to a Chinese businessman named Zhu Xin Hoi. Ho Chi Minh used the Metropole several times as a meeting place. In 1946, he held negotiations in the conference room with General Étienne Valuy and Vietnamese politician Nguyen Xi Thanh, in a small wing where the lobby bar is now located. In 1960, he again occasionally used the hotel for meetings.
After Vietnam gained independence in the 1950s, the communist government renamed the Metropole to Thong Nhat Hotel (Reunification) in 1954 and used it as an official government guesthouse.
In 1964, when American air raids became inevitable, hotel managers built a bomb shelter in the hotel’s inner courtyard to protect guests. It had a concrete ceiling 1 meter thick and could accommodate 30 to 40 people. Hotel staff underwent military training.
From 1969 to 1981, the Thong Nhat Hotel housed several embassies and UN agencies, as almost all public buildings across Hanoi were under reconstruction, and the hotel hosted various diplomatic representatives from different countries and coalitions.
After the end of the Vietnam War, several ideas were considered to revive tourism and operate the hotel. In 1987, the Pullman Hotels chain formed a joint venture with the Vietnamese government to bring the hotel up to international standards.
The hotel was completely rebuilt, regaining the name Metropole, and reopened on March 8, 1992, as the Pullman Hotel Metropole. Later, the hotel was transferred to the Sofitel chain and finally became the legendary Sofitel Metropole Hanoi.
A new opera wing with 135 rooms was added from 1994 to 1996, along with the Metropole Center office tower. The offices were converted into additional hotel rooms in 2008. In 2005, a major renovation of the rooms in the historic wing, as well as the main entrance and lobby, was carried out. As of 2007, the hotel was owned as an equal joint venture by Hanoitourist Corporation and the private investment company Indotel Limited. In 2011, the hotel’s ‘Bunker’ bomb shelter was reopened under the bamboo bar. Exposed light bulbs and yellowish painted walls survived decades of flooding by groundwater. It was restored and is now open to hotel guests and tourists.
The hotel was also used as the venue for the second meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un on February 27 and 28, 2019.
The hotel has 364 rooms divided into two wings. The historic Metropole wing, built in 1901, was inspired by classical French architecture combined with local Vietnamese style. The Metropole wing has 106 rooms.
Few hotels can claim such famous clientele as Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, Charlie Chaplin, Mick Jagger, and Angelina Jolie, but the legendary Sofitel can. Graham Greene stayed at the century-old Metropole in Hanoi while writing "The Quiet American." Donald Trump is probably not the person Greene had in mind. Trump was scheduled to arrive at the Metropole on Wednesday evening for a meeting with Kim Jong Un in a second attempt to persuade the North Korean leader to dismantle his nuclear weapons. This is just the latest moment in modern history for which the Metropole provided a richly decorated theatrical backdrop.
Somerset Maugham wrote part of his travel novel "The Gentleman in the Parlour" there; his suite is located on the second floor of the historic wing, complemented by a private garden overlooking the quiet hotel center. A separate lounge provides additional privacy and comfort.
Charlie Chaplin spent his honeymoon at the hotel with his third wife, Paulette Goddard.
Graham Greene stayed at the Metropole in the final days of French colonial rule. CIA agent Alden Pyle, the hero of "The Quiet American," is a young idealist trying to manipulate Vietnamese politics to provoke the rise of a “third force,” neither imperial nor communist. This ends disastrously, foreshadowing the bloody agony of the Vietnam War.
The Metropole, renamed by Ho Chi Minh’s communist government as the Reunification Hotel, survived massive bombing of Hanoi as the U.S. sought not to harm Soviet advisors who might have been staying there.
The hotel hosted actress Jane Fonda during her controversial 1972 visit during the war, after which she was nicknamed “Hanoi Jane” upon returning to the U.S.
Now called Sofitel Legend Metropole, the hotel has suites named after Maugham, Chaplin, and Greene, but not Fonda. The communists still rule Hanoi but manage a decidedly capitalist economy.
Sources:
https://www.sofitel-legend-metropole-hanoi.com/
https://www.historichotels.org/hotels-resorts/sofitel-legend-metropole-hanoi/history.php
