A walled palace-city modeled on Beijing's Forbidden City, built from 1805 by the Nguyen Dynasty and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993. Much of it was damaged during the 1968 Tet Offensive, and restoration is still ongoing in parts — walking through the Ngo Mon Gate into the Thai Hoa Palace grounds is still the clearest sense of the site's original scale.
Several Nguyen emperors built elaborate tomb complexes along the Perfume River outside the city, each with a distinct character — Tu Duc's is set in landscaped grounds he reportedly used as a retreat before his own death, Khai Dinh's mixes Vietnamese and European architectural styles. Worth picking two or three rather than trying to see all of them in one day.
Traveled this stretch with a fellow traveler, Jens — met somewhere along the route south from Vinh and continued on together through Hue.