Old Hoi An in 100 Photographs: The Most Complete Visual Guide to Faifo's Lost Era

Before the UNESCO listing in 1999, before the tailors and the cao lầu stalls became Instagram fixtures, this small port on the Thu Bon River was known asFaifo— one of Southeast Asia's most important trading harbours, where Japanese merchants built covered bridges, Chinese congregations erected assembly halls, and French colonial officers mapped every street corner. We spent months collecting and cataloguing100 rare photographsof old Hoi An — sourced from French colonial archives, Vietnamese heritage collections, and private family albums. Each image carries its original French or Vietnamese caption, preserved exactly as written. Below, we've organized them into8 themed galleriesso you can explore the town the way it was: street by street, river by river, craft by craft.

Hoi An's architecture is its most visible inheritance. The Japanese Covered Bridge (Chùa Cầu), built in the early 1600s, still spans the small creek that once separated the Japanese and Chinese quarters. The Phuc Kien Assembly Hall, founded by Chinese merchants from Fujian province, remains the town's largest communal building. Source: Hội An Xưa Facebook Group — post by Khê Phúc

The Thu Bon River made Faifo. For three centuries, it carried silk, ceramics, cinnamon, and pepper from the highlands to the port, and brought back Japanese silver, Chinese porcelain, and Indian textiles. Source: Hội An Xưa Facebook Group — post by Đô Thị Cổ Hội An

Old Hoi An was a living town, not a museum. People cooked, argued, gossiped, and hung laundry in the same courtyards where tourists now take selfies. Source: Hội An Xưa Facebook Group — post by Đô Thị Cổ Hội An

Hoi An's food reputation did not begin with Instagram. Cao lầu — thick rice noodles with pork, greens, and croutons, made with water from a specific local well — has been sold in the same market stalls for over a century. Source: Hội An Xưa Facebook Group — post by Tin Nóng Hội An

Hoi An was a trading port, but it was also a production centre. The silk from Duy Xuyen and Ma Chau villages was famous across the region. Source: Hội An Xưa Facebook Group — post by Đô Thị Cổ Hội An

The most intimate gallery. These are not street scenes or architectural studies — they are portraits. A Chinese merchant in a silk áo dài. A French colonial officer with his Vietnamese wife. Source: Hội An Xưa Facebook Group — post by Đô Thị Cổ Hội An is at Thành Phố Hội An.

The French colonial administration mapped Hoi An with the precision of engineers. These photographs show hand-drawn maps, cadastral surveys, and architectural drawings of the old town. Source: Hội An Xưa Facebook Group — post by Hội An Xưa

The final gallery is the hardest to categorize and the easiest to feel. These are photographs that do not fit neatly into "architecture" or "daily life" — they are atmospheric. Source: Hội An Xưa Facebook Group — post by Khê Phúc

These photographs are not just a gallery — they are aresearch tool. History researchers can cross-reference the original captions. Travel writers can map each gallery to a walkable route. Tour operators can align galleries with existing tour routes.

The town in these images is not gone. It islayered— beneath the lantern shops and the tailor stalls and the smoothie bars, the old Faifo is still there. You just need someone to show you where to look. Fingo Private Toursruns small-group and private tours through exactly these streets, rivers, and villages. Our guides grew up here. They know which courtyard still has the 18th-century altar, which alley still smells of fish sauce drying in the sun, which grandmother still makes cao lầu noodles by hand.