Constructed on the remains of a 7th century Chinese fortress, the Thăng Long Imperial Citadel was built on strategic reclaimed river lands on the lower Red River Delta and for nearly 13 centuries, remained the regional powerhouse of Northern Vietnamese political & military domination. Shortly after his ascension to the throne, Emperor Lý Thái Tổ declared a royal decree in the year 1010, to move the capital from Hoa Lư and establish a new Imperial City for the Lý Dynasty.

In 1777, the Nguyen clan was extinguished in a brutal massacre that marked the end of their reign, save for one, a fifteen-year-old boy named Nguyen Phuc Anh. Orphaned and on the run, he hid in the southern reaches of Vietnam, surviving betrayal, jungle sickness and assassins sent by the rival Tay Son brothers. Legend tells of a mysterious hermit who gave the boy refuge in the sacred mountains of Thien Thai, prophesying that the boy would reclaim his bloodline and raise an em

The enormous Imperial Palace complex, commissioned by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1406AD, is the world largest palace and contains the most extensive amount of preserved wooden structures on the planet. Located in the heart of Peking, one of the great ancient capitals of China, the Forbidden City was built to legitimise Yongle's supreme authority (after he usurped the throne) and to assert the power and grandeur of the new capital Beijing, as a stronghold to thr