The Saigon Central Post Office, and the cathedral across the square

The Saigon Central Post Office is the rare landmark that still does the job it was built for. Under a vaulted iron roof, people buy stamps and send parcels while visitors photograph the ceiling above them. It costs nothing to walk in, and the maps on the walls are the reason to look up.

What is inside the Saigon Central Post Office?

The Saigon Central Post Office holds one long public hall under a vaulted roof of iron and glass. Arched windows and wooden counters line it. At the far end hangs a large portrait of Ho Chi Minh, and along the side walls the old wooden telephone booths now house ATMs and service desks.

The hall is still a working post office. The counters sell stamps, postcards and packing boxes, and a row of souvenir stalls has moved in beside them. Sending a postcard from here is the one souvenir that needs the building.

What are the maps on the post office walls?

The maps on the post office walls are two large painted panels set into arched lunettes above the side doors. One shows Saigon and its surroundings in 1892. The other maps the telegraph lines of southern Vietnam and Cambodia in 1936, when this building ran that network.

The panels are the most interesting thing in the hall and the easiest to walk past, since they sit high up. Stand under each for a minute and read the French place names, several of which no longer exist on any modern map.

Who designed the post office?

Most sources credit Alfred Foulhoux, a French architect working in the colony, and the building went up between about 1886 and 1891. The claim that Gustave Eiffel designed it is repeated on tours and in guidebooks, and the record does not support it.

The style is French public architecture of its decade: ochre plaster, green shutters, a clock over the entrance and an iron frame inside. The colonial architecture guide sets it among the other buildings from the period and explains how much of that city survives.

When is the post office open, and when is it quiet?

The post office opens roughly seven in the morning to seven in the evening on weekdays, and keeps slightly shorter hours at weekends and on holidays. Entry is free. The hall is quietest in the first hour after opening and the last hour before closing.

Between about ten and three it fills with tour groups, which arrive by coach and come in waves. A visit timed around them takes twenty minutes and feels like a public building rather than a queue for a photograph.

Can you visit Notre-Dame Cathedral across the square?

Notre-Dame Cathedral stands directly across the square from the post office, and at present you can see it only from outside. Builders raised it between 1863 and 1880 with bricks shipped from France. It has stood under restoration since 2017, scaffolding on the towers and the interior shut for most of that time.

The square in front of it, with the statue of the Virgin, stays open, and wedding photographers work there at weekends. Restoration schedules have slipped more than once, so treat any reopening date as provisional until the doors are actually open.

What else is beside the post office?

Two things sit beside the post office and turn a twenty-minute stop into a short walk. Nguyen Van Binh book street runs down the side of the building, a shaded pedestrian lane of bookshops and cafes. It is the pleasant way to leave.

The Reunification Palace is a ten-minute walk south-west through the park, and the Opera House and Nguyen Hue walking street are ten minutes east. The Ho Chi Minh City things to do page puts them together as the colonial walk.

How does the post office fit a day in District 1?

The post office fits a District 1 morning, between the Reunification Palace when it opens and the War Remnants Museum before lunch. All three sit within a twenty-minute walk, and the heat is the only reason to take a car between them.

The three-day Saigon route gives these buildings its first morning, and the Ho Chi Minh City guide explains where to stay within walking distance of them.