Saint Joseph Cathedral

Two square bell towers stand side by side at the end of Nhà Chung Street and rise straight into the Hanoi sky. Neither has a pointed top or any ornament crowning it. Each is a plain, steady block of stone against the blue.

This is Nhà thờ Lớn, the Great Church of Hanoi. It is also called Nhà thờ Chính tòa, the cathedral of the city. It stands on Nhà Chung Street, in the Hoàn Kiếm area, right in the historic center of Hanoi.

According to the Bishops' Conference of Vietnam, construction began in 1880 and the church opened in 1888. Bishop Paul-François Puginier led the work. He was a Frenchman who left his mark on the history of Catholicism in Hanoi. Today the church has stood for more than 130 years in the middle of the city.

Its style is French medieval Gothic, with pointed arches, stone moldings running along the walls, stained glass windows and a strict symmetry. The front has two square towers of gray laterite stone and three large arched doorways at the center. A website on Hanoi's historic and cultural sites records it as one of the earliest Western religious buildings still intact in the city.

Inside, light filters through the colored glass, and the air feels quiet and deep. Stone columns, high arches and the main altar stand one behind another, so the eye is drawn toward the front. The state has recognized the church as a national monument of architecture and art.

In front of the church is a small square shaded by trees, a familiar meeting place for Hanoians across many generations. On ordinary days, people sit on the stone steps, children run and play, and small stalls tuck into the corner of the street. On Christmas Eve it becomes one of the most crowded places in Hanoi. Thousands of people gather, and candles and decorative lights brighten the whole of Nhà Chung Street.

Seen from the square early in the morning, while the street is still empty, the two towers rise against a pale blue sky. They are as silent as on the day they first came up from the soil of Hanoi. In the late afternoon, the sound of the bells drifts over the tiled roofs and into the lanes of the old streets. More than 130 years have passed. The city has changed again and again, yet the church still stands, steady and quiet, as if Hanoi could not imagine its sky without those two towers.