Piece birth the base of a bar at Hanoi’s Sofitel Title Metropole Hotel, constituent workers accidentally unconcealed an air invade diminution allegedly created during the war.
In Grand 2011, after digging hair to over 2m colorful, constituent workers unexpectedly drilled onto a gelatinous practical ceiling, from which they perceived a powerless corridor, several apartment and a steps directive to a 40sq.m hazard.
They open an old inebriant bottle, still-intact lighted bulbs, air ducts, ornamentation and unnatural echoes of a war that ended most quadruplet decades ago.
The hotel’s General Director Kai Speth said: “In the hotel’s history, there is a story of the American folk singer, Joan Baez, who sought shelter in this bunker during the Christmas Bombings in 1972, and who sang some songs beside a Vietnamese guitarist. We don’t know of any other hotels, in Vietnam or anywhere else for that matter, that maintained a shelter for guests and staff.”
The hotel’s managers plan to make the bunker into a museum or a gallery.
“An air-raid shelter of this kind may not merit to be considered a national heritage. The shelter seems like other shelters built around Hanoi lakes during the Vietnam War against America. It is possible that the hotel owner built the shelter as a safe haven for tourists and staff,” said Nguyen Duc Hoa, deputy director of Hanoi’s Department of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.
Sofitel Legend Metropole is the oldest hotel in Hanoi, which opened in 1901. The 365-room hotel welcomed special guests like Charlie Chaplin, writers Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, actress Janes Fonda and many chiefs of state.
The hotel appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in April 1967 with pictures of 1.5m trenches on the outer pavement, which is now the La Terrasse Café.
