Hanoi
capital of Vietnam
Hanoi ( ha-NOY; Vietnamese: Hà Nội, pronounced [haː˨˩ noj˧˨ʔ] ) is the capital and second-most populous centrally-governed city of Vietnam. It covers an area of 3,358.6 km2 (1,296.8 mi2), and as of 2025 has a population of 8,807,523. Hanoi had the second-highest gross regional domestic product of all Vietnamese provinces and centrally-governed city at US$48 billion in 2023, behind Ho Chi Minh City. It hosts 78 foreign embassies, the headquarters of the Vietnam People's Army (VPA), its Vietnam National University system, and other governmental organizations. Hanoi had 18.7 million domestic and international visitors in 2022. It hosts the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hoàn Kiếm Lake, West Lake, and Ba Vì National Park near the outskirts of the municipality. Hanoi's urban area has architectural styles, including pre-colonial Vietnamese architecture, French colonial architecture, brutalist apartments and disorganized alleys and tube houses stemming from the city's growth in the 20th century.
In 1010, under the Lý dynasty, emperor Lý Thái Tổ established the capital of the imperial nation Đại Việt in what would later become central Hanoi, naming the city Thăng Long ([tʰɐŋ loŋ], 'ascending dragon'). In 1428, king Lê Lợi renamed the city to Đông Kinh ([ɗoŋ kīŋ̟], 'eastern capital'), with the city using this name until 1789. In 1802, the Nguyễn dynasty moved the national capital to Huế and the city was renamed Hanoi in 1831.
“Hanoi” enters the record as capital of Vietnam. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hanoi, capital and Vietnam can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1858. VIAF identifies the subject as 153554884. The Library of Congress control number is n81100620. Authority coordinates are 21.024, 105.841. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 2023, 2022 and 1010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hanoi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.