WELCOME TO HOA LO PRISON

Hoa Lo Prison, more popularly known as the Hanoi Hilton, is a museum near the
French Quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam. It was built in the late 1890s by Vietnams French
colonizers for Vietnamese criminals (political prisoners, common-law prisoners,
juvenile delinquents).
You can see the French name Maison Centrale (a central prison) above the main
gate. The prison was surrounded by fortified walls with electric lines and sharp glass
pieces. That to prevent inmates from escaping.
The first room you enter features a display showing the Phu Khanh village which once
stood on the Hoa Lo Prison site. The village traded mainly in the manufacture and sale
of ceramic houseware, which gave the street its name- Hoa Lo directly translates to
stove or fiery furnance.
The second room displays a diorama of HL Prison back in its heyday, along with a
large iron gate that looms over the room. The gate used to stand at the mouth of the
monster, this massive steel hulk is the main attraction in a room that introduces
visitors to the cruelty and horror experienced by prisoners in Hoa Lo.
Next, stockade and shackled prisoners area. The "E" stockade is a long room with lifesize models of Vietnamese prisoners shackled in two rows, with the latrine on one end
of the room. As one can imagine from the picture, life as a political prisonal in Hoa Lo
was no picnic. Prisoners were confined in horrifying conditions, fed rotting food twice
daily, and were allowed only fifteen minutes' respite from their chains every day. The
shackles could not prevent prisoners from fraternizing, of course.
The dungeon in HL Prison. The cachot or dungeon, where dangerous or suicidal
prisoners were kept in solitary confinement. In each narrow cell, a prisoner was
shackled to the concrete floor, and the area was kept under tight guard.
Once you exit the solitary area, you will walk down a long outdoor corridor where
several memorials to Vietnamese prisoners stand, including a sewer through which

five Vietnamese death-row inmates escaped on Christmas Eve in 1951. Hoa Lo was
never "escape proof" despite its fearsome reputation - several successful jailbreaks
were recorded throughout the prison's long history.
After crossing the length of the corridor, you will pass by the quarters for female
prisoners. Female prisoners weren't spared from the harsh regime of the prison. The
most pathenic cases were the children imprisoned with their mother. They were dying
by hunger and disease. The death row dungeon stands immediately after the female
quarter- in this room, the crimes of the French colonial administrators are laid out in
painstaking detail.
At the gallery of cruelty perpetrated by the French colonizers, you can see a
guillotine stands against one wall to underscore the gruesome executions that took
place here. This particular guillotine was portable its has been moved into
somewhere to execute inmates. Another display in this room shows the portraits of
fourteen Hoa Lo women who died here; their sufferings and eventual fate are
described in the display.
Next is cell zones for prisoners who were sentenced to death.
The next stop lies in the largest outdoor area in HL Prison: a memorial monument to
honored dead of the Vietnamese revolutionary movement.
The next area is the pilot exhibit. The American POW experience in the "Hanoi
Hilton" is entirely played out in the "blue room", also known as the pilot exhibit. The
two lgalleries in the pilot exhibit show a highly sanitized view of POW life in Hoa Lo
Prison.
One gallery chronicles the harm visited upon Vietnam by American planes, and
attempts to justify the imprisonment of the hundreds of American POWs, pilots who
were shot down over North Vietnam and imprisoned in Vietnamese jails like Hoa Lo.
The second gallery purports to show average POW life in Hoa Lo, with pictures of
clean-shaven and healthy American soldiers creating a rather glowing image of prison

life. A church-like nave with a cross and images of POWs at prayer and preparing
Christmas dinner gives the impression of unfettered religious freedom. Therefore they
simile HL Prison like Hanoi Hilton- a five star hotel.
In the second floor, where display the prisonerss objects.