Cua Bac Church

On Phan Đình Phùng Street in the Ba Đình area, looking to the left, the eye finds a single bell tower. It does not rise from the middle of the front. It sits well off to one side, as if its designer had chosen to break the rule of symmetry that marks most Catholic churches of the French period in Vietnam.

This is Cửa Bắc Church.

According to the National Archives Center of Vietnam, the first stone was laid on December 4, 1927. The church opened on February 1, 1931. It was begun by Father Jean Baptiste Dronet, who came to Hanoi in 1884 and spent several decades campaigning to have the church built. Its original name was Eglise des Martyrs, the Church of the Holy Martyrs.

The architect was the Frenchman Ernest Hebrard, who laid the foundations of the Indochinese style of architecture in Vietnam. That style worked local elements into the structure of a Western Catholic church. These were a tiled roof, green space around the building, and light suited to the tropical climate. The newspaper Nhân Dân described the building as a harmony between two architectural traditions.

The clearest mark of the church is its single bell tower, set toward the right of the front. Unlike the Great Church, or most French churches in Vietnam, it does not come as a symmetrical pair. Hebrard placed the tower off center on purpose, so that the view opens up gradually as a visitor walks toward it from the crossing of Phan Đình Phùng and Quán Thánh streets. Below the tower, the front has a large round window of glass. Trees along the sidewalk wrap the whole building in green.

The church stands directly opposite Cửa Bắc, the North Gate. It is the only northern gate still standing of the citadel of Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. The gate was built in 1805 under the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty.

The two buildings face each other across the street. One is a gate of brick and stone that still carries cannon marks from 1882. The other is a brick church with a tiled roof, from the 1930s. The area around them also holds the Hồ Chí Minh Mausoleum and Ba Đình Square. The Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long is there too. It is a district crowded with traces of history, laid down century after century.

Inside, the church is one long rectangular space. Two parallel rows of columns lead from the entrance to the main altar, and a high vaulted ceiling gives the room a solemn feeling. Light filters in through the windows on both sides and through the round window on the front, softening the air inside.

Nearly 95 years after the first stone was laid, Cửa Bắc Church still stands on Phan Đình Phùng Street. It carries the mark of an architect who dared to break a rule, and it sits in a neighborhood that holds many centuries of Hanoi. Above it, the single bell tower still rises off to one side.