Hoi An Ancient Town

Take out a 20,000-đồng note and look closely: there is a small roofed bridge on it, curved like a single brushstroke. That bridge is real. It is called Chùa Cầu, built by Japanese merchants around the early 17th century, and you can walk across it this afternoon — the construction fencing is gone, after a restoration of nearly two years that finished in 2024.

Hội An: a heritage still at work

But Hội An is not that bridge. It is not a single house either, nor a gate with someone checking tickets. Hội An is a whole quarter on the lower reaches of the Thu Bồn river — which is why it has no street number, no closing time, and no single map pin that can stand for it. The heritage core covers only about thirty hectares, less than a third of a square kilometre, walkable in one part of a day. Inside that small patch of ground stand 1,107 structures under protection. That density is what is unusual about Hội An, rather than any one building. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Cultural Heritage site in late 1999; in 2009 Vietnam ranked it a special national relic in the very first round, alongside the Thăng Long Imperial Citadel, the old capital of Huế, the Mỹ Sơn temple complex and Hạ Long Bay.

Once a quarter has been inscribed, what does it live on? Have you ever wondered where the ticket you buy at the entrance actually goes? In Hội An it goes back into the very tiled roofs you have just walked past. More than half of the ticket revenue, depending on the source and the period, is set aside for restoring the relics — and the striking part is the share spent on privately owned old houses, where the state budget carries a large part of the restoration cost, and in some cases all of it. People call the arrangement letting the relics pay for the relics. And because it has to live with more than a thousand old roofs, this quarter has been on foot for over twenty years: four-wheeled vehicles are kept out all day, holidays included; motorbikes stop at the edge for most of the stretch when the streets are open to visitors; and those who live inside have a window in the middle of the day to ride home.

Keeping the roofs is not the same as keeping the people. About forty percent of Hội An natives have moved elsewhere to live and hold on to their houses in the old quarter to rent out for business; only around a third of those living inside are long-time residents. After the pandemic many old houses went up for sale, and some were damaged by fire once nobody was living in them. Then, every year, the water comes back. The largest recurring rhythm here is not a festival but the flood season: the streets go under, the relics close, ticket sales stop and the barriers come down so residents can move their belongings up to the loft — Hội An's old houses were built with exactly that in mind, their doors made to be lifted out. When the water drops, the quarter reopens. A quarter where nearly half the owners have moved away, and where things must be carried upstairs once a year, still keeps more than a thousand roofs in the same places. What do you think is holding them there — and would you like to see it for yourself?

Enough to decide whether to go

What this place is

An old urban quarter on the lower Thu Bồn river — a living ward (an administrative unit below the city), not one single building

Where

Hội An, Đà Nẵng

Recognition

UNESCO World Cultural Heritage (1999); special national relic, first ranking round (2009)

Density of relics

1,107 protected structures inside a heritage core of about 30 hectares

See first

Chùa Cầu — the structure still regarded as Hội An's Japanese trace, reopened after restoration in 2024 (verified 2026-09-06)

Getting around and tickets

Mostly on foot; cars kept out, motorbikes restricted for much of the day. The old quarter sells a sightseeing ticket (verified 2026-09-06)