Welcome to the Grand Hôtel Métropole Palace, as this wonderful hotel has been called on its opening day in 1901. Come and see the old colonists as they meet at the Café of the Metropole, sip a Nuoc-Soda and exchange the latest gossip. Stroll through the history of exotic Vietnam.
Encounter Gustave-Émile Dumoutier, the fabled French anti-imperialist who opened the hotel in 1901. Meet André Ducamp, Dumoutier’s wealthy partner, who ran the hotel for almost three decades.
Here the first “moving pictures” were shown, long before Charlie Chaplin and his wife Paulette Goddard arrived in person. Meet authors like Pierre Loti and Marguerite Duras, British dramatists Somerset Maugham and Noël Coward and of course the “war correspondent” Graham Greene. Read about Jane Fonda and Joan Baez in the bunker of the hotel during air raids in the horrifying days of the Vietnam war.
Read about Doi moi, meaning renovation, the new slogan that brought the country irreversibly to a new path. A path that lead to a total renovation of the Metropole. Finally meet the lovely people who make all this possible. The professionals behind the scenes. Welcome to the young country of the Vietnamese people with their natural talent for hospitality. A book full of fabulous historic and contemporary photographs, presenting the story of one of the last grand hotels of the exotic East.

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