Hoa Lo Prison

 Hoa Lo Prison is located at No. 1 Hoa Lo Street, Hoan Kiem, Hanoi. The relic remains long time until today, is a clear evidence for a whole period of miserable history and hard work, symbolizing the indomitable and resilient spirit of patriotic Vietnamese peoople. 

 

Hoa Lo Prison formerly known as Maison Centrale, means the Central prison, and the Vietnamese name is "Nhà tù Hỏa Lò" , is an old prison located on Hoa Lo Street, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi. This prison was built by France in 1896 in the area that was the periphery of the city, with the aim of serving as a central prison for both the part of China and Tonkin, imprisoning mainly political prisons. and the patriots against the colonial government.

  
Under the French colonial rule, Hoa Lo prison was designed to be constructed with a structure consisting of 4m high stone walls, 0.5m thick reinforced with electric steel wire. The entire prison area is divided into 4 zones: A, B, C, D, in which:

Zone A, B: for investigating offenders, unimportant offenders or offenders in prison discipline

Zone C: for French or foreign prisoners

Zone D: for prisoners waiting for death sentence

 

The total area of ​​the former prison area is over 12,000m2. However, today only 2.434m2 is retained, preserved to become a relic, serving the purpose of sightseeing of those who want to come and witness how the view of the colonial prison

Dubbed the "earthly hell" place, the most feared prison in Southeast Asia, during its time of operation, Hoa Lo Prison became a detention place of generations of soldiers and revolutionary activist. With the prison architecture were designed with torture and forced forms of cruelty, the most typical of which is the guillotinet,  those torture tools put the prison into the top 10 The world's most infamous prison.