Phung Hung Mural Street: 19 Arches, Photo Hours & Meanings

Phung Hung Mural Street is a 200-metre open-air gallery painted onto the stone arches of a 1902 French railway viaduct on the western edge of Hanoi’s Old Quarter. This guide gives you the street’s exact dimensions and borders, the story of the arches beneath the paint, what every mural is actually depicting, and the hours our volunteers use when they want a photograph with nobody in it. It is free, it never closes, and most visitors spend twenty minutes here when they should spend forty.

What is Phung Hung Mural Street, exactly?

Phung Hung Mural Street is a public art project that turned a neglected strip of railway arches into a free street gallery recalling twentieth-century Hanoi. It is not a separate street with its own name; it is a 200-metre section of Phung Hung Street, a 1,244 m road that most visitors walk past without noticing. The murals occupy the arch wall along that section only.

The project was launched in June 2017 and took seven months to complete, opening to the public in February 2018. It was delivered by the then Hoan Kiem District People’s Committee together with the Korea Foundation and UN-Habitat, timed to mark 25 years of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and South Korea. The curator was Hanoi artist Nguyen The Son, who assembled a mixed team of Vietnamese and Korean painters.

What the art replaced matters as much as the art itself. Before 2017 this stretch of arch wall was a motorbike parking lot and an informal dumping ground, dark and unwalkable after sunset. Our volunteers who grew up nearby describe it as the block you crossed the road to avoid. That context is the reason locals treat the murals with a slightly protective affection that surprises first-time visitors.

Phung Hung Mural Street at a Glance: Length, Borders and Key Facts

The mural section measures about 200 m between the Le Van Linh junction and Hang Cot street, sitting on the eastern arch wall of Phung Hung Street in Hoan Kiem Ward. The full street is 1,244 m long and runs north to south. Everything you need in one table.

Detail	Information
Vietnamese name	Phố bích họa Phùng Hưng
Full street length	1,244 m
Mural section length	Approximately 200 m
Mural section runs from	Le Van Linh junction to Hang Cot street
Number of murals	19 large works (published counts range 17 to 20)
Arches in the mural section	Approximately 25
Total arches on the viaduct	131, from Phung Hung to Long Bien station
Opened	February 2018
Built by	Vietnamese and Korean artists, curated by Nguyen The Son
Funded by	Hoan Kiem District, Korea Foundation, UN-Habitat
Medium	Paint and golden acrylic on wood panels, mounted onto the arches
Stated lifespan of panels	5 to 10 years
Entry fee	Free
Opening hours	24 hours, outdoors, unfenced
Administrative area	Hoan Kiem Ward, Hanoi (formerly Hoan Kiem District)
Time needed	30 to 45 minutes
Nearest landmark	Hang Luoc flower market, 2 minutes

Where does Phung Hung Street start and end?

Phung Hung Street runs 1,244 m from Phan Dinh Phung Street in the north to Hang Bong Street in the south. The murals are at the northern end, so if you arrive from Hoan Kiem Lake you will walk most of the street before you reach any paint.

The street has an unusual double character along its length. On its western side it runs directly alongside the railway line, which is why the viaduct dominates the view. On its eastern side it feeds into the Old Quarter through a series of much smaller streets. Historically this line was a canal circling the Thang Long Imperial Citadel, which is why the street is so straight in a district where nothing else is.

Which streets border Phung Hung Mural Street?

Working from north to south, Phung Hung Street meets Phan Dinh Phung, the Hang Luoc and Hang Cot junction, Le Van Linh, Hang Ma, Hang Vai, Bat Dan, Cua Dong, Nguyen Van To, Ngo Tram, and finally the Ha Trung and Tran Phu crossroads. The mural section sits inside the Hang Cot to Le Van Linh portion at the top of that list.

Adjoining street	Position	Why it matters to you
Phan Dinh Phung	North end	Hanoi’s most photogenic boulevard, 5 min walk
Hang Cot	North edge of murals	Ceramic mural panel at this junction
Hang Luoc	North, via Hang Cot	Flower market, spectacular before Tet
Le Van Linh	South edge of murals	Where the painted section stops
Hang Ma	East, mid-street	Festival paper street, 3 min walk
Hang Vai, Bat Dan	East	Quiet residential Old Quarter blocks
Cua Dong	East, mid-street	Where the arched viaduct section begins
Ha Trung, Tran Phu	South end	Toward Hanoi railway station

That density is the real argument for coming here. Phung Hung Mural Street is not a destination you travel to; it is a hinge between the Old Quarter and Ba Dinh, and four genuinely good streets sit within a five-minute walk of the paint.

The 131 Stone Arches Beneath Phung Hung Mural Street

The wall behind the murals belongs to a French railway viaduct built between 1900 and 1902, opened alongside Long Bien Bridge. It carries 131 stone arches from Phung Hung Street along Gam Cau to Long Bien station. The murals use only about 25 of them.

The engineering is worth two minutes of your attention. Each arch encloses roughly 16 square metres, is built of rubble stone, and stands between 2 and 6 m high depending on the ground level. The railway line from Hanoi station through Phung Hung and Gam Cau to Long Bien station runs about 1,300 m, of which the low stretch from Tran Phu to Cua Dong is solid masonry and the raised arch stretch from Cua Dong to Long Bien station runs close to 850 m. That is why the arches only start partway along the street.

Most of the arches are sealed. The current breakdown, as surveyed by the city, is stark.

Arch status	Count
Open for pedestrian and vehicle traffic	6
Sealed with two layers of wall	97
Sealed with four layers of wall	21
Left in original condition	7

Hanoi has been trying to reopen them since 2017. A pilot in 2020 punched through five arches, numbers 79 to 83, connecting Hang Cot to Hang Giay. The wider scheme stalled for years, and as of 2026 the ward is preparing a detailed 1:500 urban design plan proposing five uses for the reopened arches: handicrafts, community arts, food, a traditional market, and a public park tied to conserving Long Bien station. A separate landscaping project along 1.8 km of the line, adding planting and safety fencing, was scheduled through to April 2026.

Insider note: one of our guides, Linh, always stops guests at arch 79 rather than at the murals, because you can stand inside a sealed arch that was opened and feel the wall thickness with your hand. It makes the 131 number physical instead of abstract.

What does each Mural on Phung Hung Mural Street mean?

Almost every mural on Phung Hung Mural Street depicts a specific piece of twentieth-century Hanoi that has since disappeared, not generic Vietnamese imagery. If you know what you are looking at, the street reads as a timeline rather than a photo backdrop. Here are the works most visitors ask about.

Mural	What it shows	Why Hanoians react to it
The Public Water Tap	A queue at a communal standpipe	The defining image of the bao cap subsidy era, when households shared street taps
The State Department Store	The old Trang Tien general store	Ration-book shopping, empty shelves, a generation’s childhood errand
The Clanging Tram	Hanoi’s electric tram	Ran until 1990, and the sound is still a nostalgia trigger
The Street Vendor	A woman with a shoulder pole	The one scene on the wall you can still see live, thirty metres away
The Calligrapher	An old scholar writing Tet characters	Links to the calligraphy stalls that appear each Lunar New Year
Hang Ma at Mid-Autumn	Lanterns and masks	Hang Ma is a three-minute walk east, so it doubles as a signpost
The Old Motorbike	A vintage bike, repainted gold	Phung Hung was once Hanoi’s motorbike-selling street
Kim Vang Giot Le	A 3D interactive piece by Duong Manh Quyet	Built with depth so you can step into the frame
Long Bien Bridge	The bridge, by Korean artist Jang Su Ik	An outsider’s view of Hanoi’s most photographed structure
A Street Coloured by Flowers	By Korean artist Oh Ye Seul	Softer, brighter palette than the Vietnamese works
Ao Dai on the Old Street	By Korean artist Choi Lak Won	The Korean team’s reading of Vietnamese dress

The Vietnamese Murals Versus the Korean Murals

The two national teams produced visibly different work, and once you notice it you cannot unsee it. The Vietnamese artists painted memory: rationing, trams, taps, specific vanished institutions rendered in muted period colour. The Korean artists painted impression: brighter, looser, more romantic, reading Hanoi the way a visitor does.

Neither approach is better and the contrast is the point of a bilateral art project. If you walk the strip from Le Van Linh toward Hang Cot, the tonal shift between clusters is the easiest way to tell which team made what without reading a single label. It is also the single most useful thing a guide can point out here, and it takes ten seconds.

The 2024 Addition on Arches 61 to 64

Four newer works were added in early 2024 on arches 61 to 64 to connect the two original clusters, which had been separated by a blank stretch. Curator Nguyen The Son used a different technique: photographs printed on do paper (traditional poonah paper), mounted onto the stone, with mirror-polished stainless steel elements added.

They look nothing like the 2018 panels and some visitors assume they are unfinished. They are not. The reflective steel is deliberate, catching the street and the passing motorbikes so the artwork includes whatever is happening in front of it that second. It is the most contemporary thing on the wall.

When are the Best Photo Hours at Phung Hung Mural Street?

Arrive between 6:30 and 8:30 AM. The murals sit in the shadow of the viaduct for most of the day, so light quality barely changes; what changes dramatically is how many people are standing in front of your frame. By 10 AM on a weekend, every arch has a photoshoot in it.

Time slot	Crowd level	What you get
6:30 to 8:30 AM	Very low	Empty arches, soft light, locals exercising
8:30 to 10:00 AM	Low to moderate	Still workable on weekdays
10:00 AM to 4:00 PM	High on weekends	Wedding and graduation shoots occupy whole arches
4:00 to 6:00 PM	Moderate	Warmer light, families arriving
After 7:00 PM	Low	Poorly lit, not worth it for photos

Three practical points our volunteers repeat. Overcast days are good days here, because flat light suits painted panels far better than harsh sun. Tet and Mid-Autumn weeks are the worst possible timing if you want clean photographs, since the whole street fills with ao dai shoots. And the ceramic mural panel at the Phung Hung and Hang Cot junction is a separate artwork from the 2018 project, part of Hanoi’s ceramic mosaic road, so do not be confused when the style changes abruptly at the north end.

If you would rather have somebody explain the bao cap references while you shoot, our hanoi old quarter walking tour starts early enough to reach the arches before the crowds.

How do you get to Phung Hung Mural Street?

Walk. From Hoan Kiem Lake it is roughly 1.3 km and about 15 to 18 minutes on foot, heading north through the Old Quarter via Hang Ngang and Hang Duong, then west along Hang Ma. From Dong Xuan Market it is under 500 m.

Starting point	Distance	On foot	Notes
Hoan Kiem Lake (north end)	1.3 km	15 to 18 min	Go via Hang Ma for the best route
Dong Xuan Market	450 m	6 min	Exit west along Hang Chieu, then Hang Luoc
Hang Ma Street	300 m	3 min	Walk west to the railway wall
O Quan Chuong gate	700 m	9 min	Via Hang Chieu and Hang Luoc
Hanoi Railway Station	1.2 km	15 min	Straight up Phung Hung the whole way
Noi Bai Airport	26 km	40 to 45 min by car	Grab is the simplest option

Grab and taxis can drop you at the Phung Hung and Hang Cot junction without difficulty. Motorbike parking exists along the wall but is informal, so agree a price before you hand over the key. There is no ticket office, no entrance and no staff, which occasionally confuses visitors who expect a gallery.

What to Combine With Phung Hung Mural Street in One Walk

Treat the murals as the first stop of a morning, not a standalone trip. Everything worth seeing here sits within a ten-minute walk, and the natural sequence runs from the arches into the Old Quarter or out toward Ba Dinh. Thirty minutes at the wall plus two of the stops below makes a genuinely good half day.

Stop	Walk time	Best paired because
Hang Ma Street	3 min	Festival paper, same era as the murals depict
Hang Luoc flower market	2 min	Spectacular in the two weeks before Tet
Hang Cot and Hang Chieu	5 min	Leads to O Quan Chuong gate
Phan Dinh Phung Street	5 min	Tamarind trees and villas, best at the same early hour
Long Bien Bridge	12 min	The bridge the viaduct was built to reach
Dong Xuan Market	6 min	Breakfast in the food alley afterwards

For the wider picture of how this street fits alongside the other nineteen worth walking, see our guide to the Famous Streets in Hanoi.

What Should You Know Before Visiting Phung Hung Mural Street?

Three things, and the first is the one nobody tells you. The murals are painted on wood panels mounted onto the arches, not on the stone, which is why they crack, peel and fade on a predictable cycle and why their stated lifespan is only 5 to 10 years.

• Condition varies and repairs are periodic

The works degraded badly by 2022, were restored over two weeks in December that year and reopened on 6 January 2023, then were refreshed again before Tet in early 2024. Expect some panels to look tired. If you arrive and a section is fenced for maintenance, that is normal and usually short.

• This is not Train Street

Visitors constantly conflate the two because both involve railway lines in the Old Quarter. The track-side cafés with restricted access are a different location. Here the railway runs high above you on the viaduct and there is no safety issue at all, but do not climb the wall or the embankment to reach the line.

• It is a working street, not a set

Residents live behind those shopfronts and the pavement is narrow. Stepping into the road to get a wider frame is how people get clipped by motorbikes, so back up onto the pavement opposite instead.

FAQs About Phung Hung Mural Street