Vietnam’s War Remnants Museum among world’s 10 best ones

The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City has been named among the top 10 museums in the world, according to a list released by TripAdvisor.

The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. (Source: Vietbao)

“The Vietnam War is examined at this powerful museum in Ho Chi Minh City, through often disturbing images and objects including a guillotine, brought to Vietnam by the French,” TripAdvisor wrote.

War Remnants Museum first opened to the public in 1975. Once known as the “Museum of American War Crimes”, it's a shocking reminder of the long and brutal Vietnam War. Graphic photographs and American military equipment are on display.

A helicopter with rocket launchers, a tank, a fighter plane, a single-seater attack aircraft are on display outside.

One corner of the grounds is devoted to the notorious French and South Vietnamese prisons on Phu Quoc and Con Son Islands. Artefacts include that most iconic of French appliances, the guillotine, and the notoriously inhumane ‘tiger cages’ used to house war prisoners.

Formerly the Exhibition House for U.S. and Puppet Crimes, the War Remnants Museum is consistently popular with Western tourists.

The ground floor of the museum is devoted to a collection of posters and photographs showing support for the antiwar movement internationally. Upstairs, look out for the Requiem Exhibition. Compiled by legendary war photographer Tim Page, this striking collection documents the work of photographers killed during the course of the conflict, on both sides, and includes works by Larry Burrows and Robert Capa.

It has more than 20,000 artifacts, images and documentaries that relive the atrocities, including war crimes perpetrated by colonial and imperial forces, and millions of Vietnamese suffer the consequences until today.

Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France) tops the list, followed by the National 9/11 Museum and Memorial (New York City, U.S.), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, U.S.), The British Museum (London, UK), Prado National Museum (Madrid, Spain), etc./.

VNF