When you have taken your first step through the door of the house, you have entered one of the most beautiful French villas built under the influence of the architectural school Neoclassisisme Nationalise, sometimes called Indochinese School, which was very popular from about 1920 to 1930 in Hanoi.
Villa No. 41 is one of four similar villas at the Tran Hung Dao and Nguyen Che Nghia corner. Villa No. 43 is the residence of the Deputy Country Director of the World Bank , and together the four villas from a square which represents the well-known French Classic Masterplan School (Beaux-Art), first introduced to Hanoi in 1923 by the famous French architect Ernest Hebrard. His name was linked to the masterplan Ville Mondial, published in Rome in 1909 and in Great Britain in 1912.
The Villa was built in Boulevard Gambetta, named after the French prime minister Leon Gambetta (1838-1882) towards the end of the 1920s. Hanoi had then undergone a construction boom, particularly in the Western part of the city, south of Hoan Kiem Lake. According to Dr. Nguyen Vinh Phuc, a famous scholar who devotes his whole life studying Hanoi, the Villas were designed by Hebrard and built by the French property developer Eminent, who constructed the villas as a business enterprise.
Villa No. 41 was bought by a high ranking official at the Indochinese General Directorate of Education, but changed owners many times, until in 1947 a French merchant, Bonfils, bought it and lived there until 1956. In 1960, Mr. Tran Chi Hien, Head of the International Relation Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and one of his staff, moved into the villa.
With time, the Villa had to accommodate as much as seven families at a time, and by the beginning of the 1990s, after a long period without maintenance, the Villa wasin a serious state of disrepair.
Boulevard Gambetta has been renamed Tran Hung Dao Street, in honor of the Vietnamese general who twice defeated the Mongolian invadors.
In 1997, a capital repair job was initiated by the Royal Norwegian Embassy. Instead of a one-storey house at the back of the villa, a new two-storey house has been built, but the main villa has been restored to its original form to the degree possible. The strict, symmetrical principle has been kept, with the axis at the middle of the entrance door, and widows and doors are without rank decoration. The tile roof has a steep angle, with support beams made of wood. This is a typical trait of the Indochinese architectural school in the 1920s, which tried to adapt the European style of Neoclassisme to the tropical climate in Indochina. The entire premises has an area of 560 m2.
If you look to your left before entering the gate, you can observe the difference between the architectural tendencies of the 1920s and the 1930s. The Shell building, which is now the Head Quarter of the Ministry of Science and Technology, is a gigantic geometrical box, representing the architectural school of Modernisme, popular in Hanoi during the 1930s.
With the official inauguration of Villa No. 41 on Friday 27 November 1998, as the Residence of the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Hanoi, the villa has become a beautiful symbol of Norway's friendship and cooperation with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Royal Norwegian Embassy, Hanoi