The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Old Quarter & around

Bill Bensley designed this 47-room luxury hotel as a love letter to the opera house a few blocks away, imagining where the singers and costume designers might have stayed during the golden age of the art form. Every room pays tribute to a different opera figure, the spa runs theatrical, and the drinking options range from a chic bar to a full cocktail lounge. It holds a Forbes Five Star and three Michelin Keys, which tells you roughly what a night here costs.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Graham Greene and Charlie Chaplin once slept here, and the suites still carry their names. This Forbes Four Star, Michelin One Key hotel near Hoan Kiem Lake is a colonial-era landmark whose original 1901 Heritage Wing has been carefully restored without losing the slight mustiness that makes old hotels feel earned. The newer Opera Wing adds a contemporary-classic counterpoint. Indochine-style rooms, a spa, an outdoor pool, and several dining options round it out.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A dinosaur skeleton hangs above the bar, which sets the tone pretty efficiently. The Haflington is a two-floor cocktail bar in the Old Quarter styled after the great natural history museums of Europe, all soft lighting, fossils, and shelves of old books. The menu, called The Jungle Book, runs from obscure classics to house signatures. It landed on Asia's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks with how seriously the cocktails are taken here.

1. The 50 #87 · Asia’s 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The 50 #86 · Asia’s 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A small luxury hotel in Hanoi's Old Quarter, with French-style balconies on most rooms and a rooftop pool on the tenth floor that earns its own argument with the city skyline. The Indochine style goes light on the clutter and the drama, so the antique-inspired look feels more like good taste than a theme park. A spa, fitness center, rooftop bar, and Vietnamese restaurant round things out. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A boutique hotel on leafy Trần Phú Street, just west of the Old Quarter, where the rooftop infinity pool gives you the Hanoi skyline without the scooter soundtrack. The 60 rooms run to bold colors and modern bathrooms, with a spa, a gym, and an in-house tailor for anyone whose luggage didn't survive the trip. Temple of Literature and the lake are a short walk; the street food is even closer.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A boutique hotel in Hoan Kiem where the mattresses are roughly the height of a small child and the color scheme reads like someone handed Toulouse-Lautrec a paint bucket, which is fitting, since the bar downstairs is named for him. The colonial bones get a French polish throughout, and the absinthe ritual at La Fée Verte is performed with the solemnity it deserves. Bold, deliberate, and not remotely interested in blending in.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The design concept here borrows from both Swedish minimalism and French restraint, and somehow the two don't fight. This small hotel sits inside Hanoi's Old Quarter, one of the louder, more relentless neighborhoods on earth, and the interiors respond by going almost conspicuously quiet: natural textures, soft light, nothing competing for attention. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels. Think of it as somewhere to return to after the city has made its point.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The Graham Greene Martini is a permanent fixture on an otherwise rotating seasonal cocktail list, which tells you something about the crowd the Metropole's poolside thatched-roof bar is playing to. It's a small, polished space, plush armchairs and a few counter seats, with bar snacks that drift between Vietnamese summer rolls and fish and chips without apology. Gin and colonial nostalgia, basically.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery