The former
presidential palace is now called Hall of Reunification.
Originally, here stood the palace of the French governor of Cochin
China, built in 1868. Later the building was the official
residence of the South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. In
February 1962 the palace was bombed by two South Vietnamese
fighter planes in an attempt to assassinate Diem.
The president
and his family hid in the cellar and remained unscathed. However,
during the attempted assassination of the president the palace
was destroyed for the most part.
The original
building was then replaced by a new one, which now is the Hall
of Reunification. Inside the new building everything was
left the way it was found on April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese
forces took Saigon.
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