Today in Hue I went to the Citadelle, the former Imperial Palace.
It is similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing with a wall and gate and pathways leading up to the main buildings.
A very important battle was waged here during the "American War" when the communists took Hue and battled with the Americans for almost a month, the two sides blowing up everything and killing countless civilians.
The city has never really recovered and the palace is still mostly in ruins. At some place you can see huge bronze pots that are left to stand alone as everything that was once around them burned to the ground.
Today the place is flooded and we enter by hopping from one paving stone to then next to get to dry ground. The paving stones have been laid out for this purpose, but they too are an inch to two inches underwater.
There are some old buildings left and some newly reconstruct
ed areas. The place must have been quite impressive at one time. But there is not enough money to redo it and there is little political will to help this area.
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