War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City: Tickets, Hours, Floor Guide

The War Remnants Museum (Bảo tàng Chứng tích Chiến tranh) is at 28 Vo Van Tan street in central Ho Chi Minh City, a 10–15 minute walk from Independence Palace. It is open 07:30–17:30 every day, and since 1 October 2026 an adult ticket costs 60,000 VND. Give it at least two hours. Much of what is on the walls is photographs of the American war in Vietnam, many of them graphic, so read the section on children before you bring any.

If you searched for the War Remnants Museum in Hanoi: there isn’t one. This museum is in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Hanoi’s military museums are separate places with their own collections.

How much is a War Remnants Museum ticket in 2026?

The standard ticket is 60,000 VND per person, the same for Vietnamese and foreign visitors. Until 30 September 2026 it was 40,000 VND, and most guides online, and most visitors’ videos, still quote the old price. The rise came with a new Ho Chi Minh City fee resolution, passed in August 2026, that covers the city’s museums and heritage sites.

Half price, 30,000 VND, applies to older people, people with severe disabilities, people with revolutionary merit, ethnic-minority residents of the poorest communes, and People’s and Meritorious Artisans. Entry is free for pupils and students, children, members of poor and near-poor households, and people with especially severe disabilities. Students and members of poor and near-poor households have to register for the free ticket on the museum’s online system before the visit, then bring ID (and, for students, a student card). Children collect their free ticket at the counter with a parent or relative. The museum no longer gives an age limit for children, and it isn’t clear whether a foreign student card counts, so ask at the desk.

Tickets are sold in two places only: the counter at the Vo Van Tan gate and the museum’s own site, ticket.baotangchungtichchientranh.vn, which opened in February 2026. The museum has warned about fake ticket websites, so don’t buy anywhere else that claims to be official. Online you can book up to 30 days ahead and up to 20 tickets per order, pay by Visa, MasterCard, JCB or a Vietnamese e-wallet such as MoMo, and get a QR code by email that is scanned at the gate. The ticket is good only for the date you chose; refunds need a cancellation at least 24 hours before. Visitors’ videos show queues at the counter, and an online ticket takes you straight to the gate scanner.

How long do you need, and which floor should you start on?

Plan on two hours at the very least. In visitors’ videos several people stayed three to four hours. Last entry and the ticket desk are at 17:00 and the galleries close at 17:30, so if you want to see everything, arrive by 14:30.

The museum’s own route map, April 2026 edition, numbers the rooms 1 to 12. It starts on the top floor with Room 1, works down through the building to the ground floor, then sends you out to the prison exhibit and the open-air yard. The top floor is labelled Lầu 2, the “second floor” in Vietnamese and British counting; American visitors will call it the third floor. Several vloggers follow the official order and walk down from the top. Others start on the ground floor, which covers the worldwide movement against the war, and describe it as a gentler way in. Many videos begin in the yard, because the aircraft and tanks are the first thing past the gate.

Any order works. What matters is saving energy for the Agent Orange rooms, which visitors’ videos most often call the hardest to look at.

What is on each floor

The museum opened on 4 September 1975, a few months after the war ended, as an exhibition of what it called US and Saigon-government war crimes, and took its present name in 1995. Its tagline today is “Museum for Peace”, and it is the only Vietnamese member of the International Network of Museums for Peace, which it joined in 1998. It tells the war from the Vietnamese side. Vloggers say so plainly, one of them calling it “the story from the other side”, and most still recommend going. The collection runs to more than 20,000 documents, objects, photographs and films. The rooms below follow the official route map.

Top floor: Historical Truths, Requiem and two photo collections

Room 1, Historical Truths, sets out the background to the US war in Vietnam in photos, documents and objects. Room 2, Requiem, shows the work of more than 130 photographers of many nationalities who died covering the wars in Indochina; the collection was put together by the photographers Tim Page and Horst Faas. Rooms 3 and 4 hold two Japanese photographers’ collections: Goro Nakamura’s reportage on Agent Orange, and Ishikawa Bunyo’s Vietnam – War and Peace, with over 100 photos. Room 5, White Doves, is a children’s education room.

Requiem, Vietnam – War and Peace and Agent Orange in the Vietnam War closed on 20 June 2026 for a redesign and reopened on 21 September 2026, the International Day of Peace. The new layout adds a touchscreen where you can try being a war correspondent, and a digital archive. Any guide or video from before then shows these rooms as they were. Many vloggers single out Requiem as the room not to miss.

First floor: War Crimes and Agent Orange Effects

Room 6, War Crimes, covers atrocities of the war, among them the Son My (My Lai) massacre of 1968. Room 7, Agent Orange Effects, documents the consequences of the defoliant in about 100 photographs plus documents and objects. Rooms 6 and 7, together with Room 3 upstairs, hold the photos of dead and injured people. In visitors’ videos, the Agent Orange room is the one people most often call the hardest part of the visit; vloggers chose not to film many of the photos, needed to sit down afterwards, or saw other visitors crying.

Ground floor: The World Supports Vietnam

Room 9 covers international support for Vietnam and the protests against the war from 1954 to 1975, including objects donated by American veterans. Room 10 holds temporary exhibitions. Visitors’ videos describe this floor as a calmer start than the floors above, and the souvenir shop is down here too.

The yard and the prison exhibit

Past the gate, the courtyard is filled with American aircraft, helicopters, armour and artillery, and in visitors’ videos people walk right up to them. The machines in recent photos include a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, an F-5 fighter, an A-1 Skyraider, an A-37, an M113 armoured carrier and an M48 tank. The museum also has a peace bell cast from bomb fragments that visitors can ring. Visitors’ videos show little shade out here and a lot of heat; in the same videos the indoor galleries are air-conditioned, so do the yard first or last depending on the time of day.

On the west side of the grounds, a separate building holds Room 11, on the prison system during the war. It covers more than 200 prisons, including Con Dao, Phu Quoc and Chi Hoa, and has a reconstruction of the “tiger cages” used at Con Dao and a guillotine. In visitors’ videos this is one of the parts people find most chilling, and the open area around the cages is very hot with no shelter.

Is the War Remnants Museum suitable for children?

We found no minimum age or content warning from the museum. Its rules say children under 10 must be with an adult and children must be supervised at all times. Rooms 6 and 7 on the first floor, and Room 3 upstairs, hold the photos of dead and injured people, which visitors’ videos call very graphic; many vloggers would not show them on camera.

Parents and vloggers in visitors’ videos say to think twice before bringing young children, or to look through the galleries first yourself. For young children, keep to the yard and the ground floor. White Doves is on the top floor beside Room 3’s Agent Orange photos, so have an adult lead the way there and go ahead to decide what else is fine. The same goes for adults who are sensitive to images of injury: the first floor and Room 3 are the ones to skip or walk through quickly.

How to get to the War Remnants Museum

On foot from the centre

The ticket desk and main entrance are on Vo Van Tan; motorbikes park at the back gate on Le Quy Don. Walking distances measured on OpenStreetMap:

• Turtle Lake (Ho Con Rua): about 600 m, under 10 minutes straight along Vo Van Tan.
• Independence Palace: about 900 m, 10–15 minutes.
• Notre-Dame Cathedral: about 950 m, 12–15 minutes.
• Saigon Central Post Office: about 1.1 km by way of the cathedral, 15–18 minutes.
• Ben Thanh Market: 1.2–1.4 km, 15–20 minutes.
• Bui Vien walking street: 1.8–1.9 km, about 25 minutes.

Add a few minutes for crossing Saigon’s streets. One-way streets make the drive from Ben Thanh about 2.4 km, twice the walk, so on foot is about as quick. A Grab from District 1 is a short, cheap ride; check the fare in the app before you book.

From the airport or Phu My cruise port

Tan Son Nhat airport is 6.5–7 km from the museum by road, about 20 minutes off-peak and longer at rush hour. A Grab or Be car costs about 150,000–250,000 VND. The 109 airport bus, 15,000–20,000 VND, goes to Ben Thanh, a 15–20 minute walk from the museum. Our guide to getting from Ho Chi Minh airport to the city centre has the options in more detail.

Cruise passengers docking at Phu My are about 62 km from the museum by road, 1.5–2 hours each way. On a single day in port that leaves time for the museum and one or two nearby sights, not much more, so watch the ship’s all-aboard time.

Audio guide, photos, bags and food

The audio guide costs 120,000 VND in English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Korean, Russian, Italian or German, and 60,000 VND in Vietnamese. Rent one at the ticket counter or the reception desk in the lobby, or add it to an online ticket with a 90-minute time slot. Older guides and videos quote 20,000–80,000 VND; those prices are out of date. In visitors’ videos the captions are in English as well as Vietnamese, so you can manage without the audio guide if you like reading.

Phone photos are allowed. The museum’s rules ban flash, tripods and selfie sticks, and professional photography or filming needs advance registration; check the signs in each room. Don’t touch the exhibits, don’t eat, drink or smoke in the exhibition areas, and dress appropriately. Large bags have to go into lockers under the rules. The rules don’t give a fee or a size limit, so if you are coming from a hotel check-out or a ship, leave big luggage behind if you can.

There is a café inside, and visitors’ videos also show drinks stalls and coffee shops by the gate. In visitors’ videos, coconut sellers by the entrance ask high tourist prices, so agree the price before they open one. Street dishes in the surrounding blocks, such as phở, bánh mì or cơm tấm, cost about 30,000–80,000 VND each.

What to combine with the War Remnants Museum

Visitors’ videos often pair the museum with Independence Palace on the same day, and it fits a half-day walk round the old centre. The loop from the museum to Turtle Lake, Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Saigon Central Post Office and Independence Palace, then back, is about 3 km on foot. Many vloggers needed a break after the museum, so plan lunch or a coffee after it rather than another heavy stop. For other museums in the city, see our list of museums in Ho Chi Minh City.

If you’d rather have a guide handle the tickets and the traffic, our Ho Chi Minh City Classic Tour covers the centre. Cruise passengers on a day in port can take the full-day Ho Chi Minh City tour from Phu My port.

Ho Chi Minh City Classic Tour

1 day

Start from:  $42 /person

Full day Ho Chi Minh city tour from Phu…

1 day

Start from:  $55 /person

FAQ

Sources: War Remnants Museum, visitor information, route map and rules (2026); official ticket site, terms and audio-guide prices (checked November 2026); Tuoi Tre on the October 2026 fees and free student entry; VOH on the city fee resolution (August 2026); HTV on free student tickets; SGGP on online ticketing and the old fee (February 2026); VOH and Thanh Nien on the reopened galleries (September 2026); Bao Van Hoa and SGGP on the museum’s 50th anniversary (2025); Nhan Dan on the museum’s history; airport fares from The Myst Dong Khoi and nexttripradar; food prices from nexttripradar and La Siesta; distances measured on OpenStreetMap; visitor observations from 49 YouTube channels (2019–2026), counted only where three or more channels agree. Banner photo: Dan Lundberg / Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0; the crop is shared under CC BY-SA 2.0. Featured photo: Jou 0180 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.