Saint Joseph Cathedral
— — two grey towers above a narrow Hanoi square.
Not only on a wall.
“Hanoi's Catholic cathedral, opened on Christmas Eve 1886. Twin square bell towers rise above Nha Tho street in the Hoàn Kiếm district, west of Hoàn Kiếm Lake. The neo-Gothic design borrows directly from Notre-Dame de Paris, scaled to a colonial-era budget and built in local brick and laterite. Mass is said daily in Vietnamese, and a low row of café tables faces the western front from across the street.
Saint Joseph Cathedral, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Saint Joseph Cathedral stands on Nha Tho street, sometimes called Cathedral street, in Hanoi's Hoàn Kiếm district, a few blocks west of Hoàn Kiếm Lake. Built on the site of the demolished Bao Thien Pagoda, the cathedral opened on Christmas Eve 1886 under Bishop Paul-François Puginier and serves as the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hanoi. The twin western towers stand about 31 metres high. The architecture is neo-Gothic, scaled down from Notre-Dame de Paris and faced in local stone that has weathered to a deep grey under Hanoi's wet seasons.
The cathedral is built of brick faced in laterite and a render that has weathered, in Hanoi's heavy summer rains and dry winters, to the dark grey-green that gives the building its character. Restoration work completed in 2022 cleaned and re-pointed the western façade and replaced the cement skim with a lime-based render closer to the 1880s original, while keeping the colour. The rose window above the central portal carries imported stained glass from the 1880s, much of it original. Interior columns are local hardwood painted to read as stone.
The cathedral is open for visitors most days outside Mass times. Six daily Masses are said in Vietnamese, and a Sunday English Mass is held in the early evening. Modest dress is asked at the door; shoulders and knees should be covered. The narrow western square in front of the cathedral, lined with cafés on Nha Tho street, is one of the most photographed corners of the Old Quarter, especially around dusk when the towers turn black against a thinning sky.