It’s claimed by several tourism websites that a gateway from one of the ancient Gia Định citadels has survived and may be viewed on the Lê Văn Duyệt-Phan Đăng Lưu intersection in Bình Thạnh District, close to the Lê Văn Duyệt Mausoleum. However, a little research into the history of that area reveals that the gateway in question has more recent origins.
The gateway, popularly known as the “Gia Định Citadel Gate” (Cổng thành Gia Định), is built into the outer wall of Trương Công Định Secondary School and does bear a very superficial resemblance to the east gate of the 1837 Gia Định Citadel as depicted in the famous drawing of the French attack of 1859, although clearly it was conceived on a significantly smaller scale.
A 1966 map of what is now the Lê Văn Duyệt-Phan Đăng Lưu junction.
In fact, since neither the Lũy Bán Bích city walls of 1772 nor the two citadels of 1790 and 1837 (see “The Citadels of Gia Định”) were located anywhere near this neighborhood, the idea that it ever formed part of those structures may be ruled out.
Old maps reveal that the secondary school stands on the site formerly occupied by the historic Gia Định School of Drawing (École de Dessin Gia-Dinh), an applied arts school set up by the French in 1913 to provide continuing studies for graduates of the Thủ Dầu Một School of Indigenous Arts (École d’Art Indigène de Thu-Dau-Mot, teaching mainly woodwork and lacquerware) and the Biên Hòa School of Arts (École d’Art de Bien-Hoa, teaching mainly ceramics and bronzecasting).
The École de Dessin Gia-Dinh, pictured in the 1920s.
An important training ground for many pioneering southern painters and sculptors, it was renamed the Gia Định School of Applied Arts (École des Arts Décoratifs de Gia-Dinh) in 1940, and after 1954 it became the Gia Định Secondary School of Decorative Arts (Trường Trung học Trang trí Mỹ thuật Gia Định).
In 1955, the Saigon National College of Fine Art (Trường Quốc gia Cao đảng Mỹ thuật Sài Gòn) was opened right next door to the secondary school to teach painting and sculpture. After reunification in 1975, the two schools merged to become the Hồ Chí Minh City College of Fine Art (Trường Cao đảng Mỹ thuật Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh), and when this institution was upgraded to the status of a university in 1981, all teaching was confined to the 1954 building.
The facade of the Gia Định Secondary School of Decorative Arts, picutred in 1960.
The original École de Dessin Gia-Dinh building of 1913 was subsequently demolished to make way for the Trương Công Định Secondary School, but its attractive gateway bearing the name “Gia-Đinh” clearly caught the eye of city planners, who had it preserved as part of the school wall.
As of 2025, although the gate still exists, its facade has been completely painted over to match the white-beige color palette of the secondary school, making it harder to spot compared to its previous shade of bright yellow, as shown in the top image taken in 2016.
Tim Doling is the author of the guidebooks Exploring Huế (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2018), Exploring Saigon-Chợ Lớn (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2019) and Exploring Quảng Nam (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2020) and The Railways and Tramways of Việt Nam (White Lotus Press, 2012) For more information about Saigon history, visit his website, historicvietnam.com.
