DANANG HISTORICAL MUSEUM

The Danang General Museum is in Le Duan Street – one of the Danang’s most bustling street. The  

bustling and exciting atmosphere outside do not affect its calm space. Passing through a small gate, tourists will realise comfortable feelings thanks to Bonsai, many kinds of flowers and green valuable ornamental trees. This shows Danang’s exciting atmosphere in spite of many ups and downs of the city history.

The museum is the place where stories and legendaries about Danang people through years of struggle and construction on this lovely land are kept. This is a long history about our living through normal working instruments, daily tool, folksongs, songs and words of Quang people. Years and months seem to stop on each ancient objects, war injury seems to halt on each bomb and bullet. But every ancient object and each painting still remain pain of the war for living right and damaged struggle but show profound pride in the heart of each Danang person.

All will pass. In spite of current hurry, Danang people will never forget to spend some time to visit the musem and to memorise the past, a heroic song of the homeland.

HO CHI MINH MUSEUM

Fifth Military Division

* Address: No 1 Duy Tan street, Danang city

- Tel: (84.511) 624014

- Director: Tran Dinh Ky

- Mobile: 84.903597850

* Opening hours: from 7:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 16 p.m.

A staff of guides is hospitable, caring and enthusiastic. They are fluent in Vietnamese and English.

1. Uncle Ho’s stilt house, gardens and an aquarium:

The South was completely liberated in 1975. On 12th 1976 the museum started to be built in order to realize hopes, and loves of local people, cadres, and soldiers in the Fifth Division to dear Uncle Ho. The house is entirely similar to the one in Hanoi capital. There are an orchard and an aquarium in its fresh and attractive campus. Many tourists visit this site when coming to the city.

2. Ho Chi Minh Museum:

There are four showrooms of Ho Chi Minh’s life, a national hero, a worldwide famous cultural man. Numerous valuable and rare articles that reveal deep love of local people, cadres, and soldiers in the Fifth Division to dear Uncle Ho and in reverse. Kiem, a woman living in Ky Xuan ward, Tam Ky district, Quang Nam province, hided a photograph of Uncle Ho in a bamboo culinder since 1965. Until 1975 she brought it to the ward committee to introduce to the public.

CHAMPA MUSEUM

When visiting the Champa museum in Danang, whether in the morning or in the afternoon, on rainy or sunny days, visitors still perceive an individual atmosphere particular to this place, the reverie of reminiscences.

Built in July 1915 with the support of the Far-East Archaeological Research Institute in Hanoi, the Champa Museum now has nearly 2000 large and small sculptures. Of these, 288 are on display inside the museum, 187 objects in the garden and more than 1.200 objects are reserved in the storehouse. Most of the sculptures in the museum are original and mainly of three kinds of materials, including sandstone, terracotta and bronze. The majority of these sculptures from the 12th to the 15th century are made of sandstone with different art styles.

The sculptures displayed here almost have the same drifting life as the very destiny of the once-glorious culture that generated them. Through the ruins of time, war and even the oblivion, such original Champa sculptures were hardly collected and brought here by many human generations. And in this systematic collection, these works of the ancient Champa artists again have a new life.

Coming to visit the museum, it seems that we see again the glorious time of the past of a nation for whom both the passion for art and the creative talent were already at a very high level. The mysterious world of deities, the pictorial legends, the religious symbols, the curving lines of the bodies of dancing girls, the features of full swelling breasts, the smiles of a vague time… all of these are shown very lively and in much in details.

Despite profoundly influenced by the architecture and sculpture of the Indian civilization, the ancient Champa, nevertheless, has a vision of life and religion according to their own feeling. Such refraction brought to their world of art a really distinct beauty. It is spiritual though it is very close; it has unique though it is familiar. It is a subtle and distinctive beauty.

FIFTH DIVISION MUSEUM

* Address: No 1 Duy Tan street, Danang city

- Tel: (84.511) 624014

- Director: Tran Dinh Ky

- Mobile: 84.903597850

* Opening hours: from 7:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 16 p.m.

A staff of guides is hospitable, caring and enthusiastic. They are fluent in Vietnamese and English.

* Inauguration date: 7th January 1982

Display area: 8.819 sq. kilometers, including indoor and outdoor areas.

1. Outdoor display area:

In this 5.451 sq. kilometer area there are big-sized weapons namely aircrafts, tanks, armored cars, 75-175 mm cannons, etc. that were used in anti-French and anti-American wars by enemy’s military, and were caught by Fifth Military Division soldiers.

2. Indoor display area:

In area of 3.368 sq. kilometers, 12 showrooms display thousands of photographs and articles on establishment, struggle, and victory of the Fifth Military Division for 56 years (from 1945 to 2001). In particular, some of them carry local people’s strength, creativity, intelligence and talents in the two wars, for example: a set of lead openers of Dang Tien Loi, a pair of slippers of Phan Thi Mua, and a two-bottomed basket of Ho Le Phuong.

- A set of lead openers of the revolutionary martyr Dang Tien Loi: He used them to bomb in a radar zone of Americans and their puppets located in Son Tra peninsula on the 15th August 1972. It took him 3 months to prepare the attack. He had to eat fried rice, sleep in dark caves to secretly find out targets and make battles. Together with his six partners, he had ten successful attacks to the zone which caused great damages to the enemy. Unfortunately, he died in the tenth assault on 12th December 1972. A set of lead openers which are shown in the museum are the only remains after his death.

- A pair of slippers of Phan Thi Mua: She was born in 1955, and works as a special task force member of Danang city. In 1972 she was appointed to attack American fuel depot at the crossroad Trung Nu Vuong – Nui Thanh. So she decided to work there. Everyday she hided a little of dynamite power in her slippers and brought it to the depot. For four months from April to August 1972 four kilos of dynamite were carried in. The whole city was shocked by a big explosion at 9 p.m. in the middle of August 1972. The depot was destroyed. She was granted a resistance war medal of second level by the government in 1975.

- A two-bottomed basket of Ho Le Phuong family: They plaited the basket with two bottoms. It was used to bring secret documents to their son Ho Le An, a revolutionary soldier in period of 1965-1970. They decided to give it to the museum for display in 1977.

DANANG SCIENCE LIBRARY

* Address: N0 33 Tran Phu street, Danang city

- N0 44 Bach Dang street, Danang city

- Phone number: 84.511.828208 / 827533 / 821295

- Director: Ha Xuan Dao

* Opening hours: from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday and Sunday afternoons are off.

Established on the 18th October 1986, the library experienced 3 times of name changes: Quang Nam library, Quang Nam – Da Nang library, Danang library.

* Aims and functions:

- To gather, select, and store all kinds of documents, books on numerous fields.

- To arrange documents, organize meetings on directory science, and build many kinds of services to meet readers’ demand.

- To manage, conduct and instruct professional skills to libraries in all districts of Danang city.

* Materials:

- 120.000 items on all fields (science, language) divided into 3 types:

     + Researching documents: reference books, dictionaries, directory-divided documents, etc.

     + Monographic documents: books, brochures, and newsletters on land and people of Danang city and Quang Nam province.

     + Concentrated documents: books, materials published in the south before 1975

* Service rooms:

- Comprehensive reading room: 100 seats

- Newspaper and magazine reading room: 60 seats

- Researching, monographic and concentrated document reading room

- English and French material reading room

- Material borrowing room:

- Outdoor reading seats

* Service types:

- Reading at the library

- Borrowing

- Editing and popularizing directory types, informing materials of classified topics.

- Displaying, exhibiting books and newspapers with concentrated topics

- Copying materials.