Vietnam is trying to save its old imperial capital Hue, which has been scarred by four decades by war, fire and typhoons.
The communist authorities are hoping that growing ties with the West will bring money to restore the walled citadel, imperial city, tombs, temples and palaces of Vietnam's last ruling dynasty.The government reckons it needs $4 million to restore 17 of the most important monuments in Hue, a dreamy city on the central eastern coast set among forested hills and cut in two by the Perfume River.
But an international appeal in 1983 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for that amount fell mostly on deaf ears.
Hue officials say the city's only assured regular funding for restoration is 1 billion dong ($125,000) the Hanoi government promised last year to provide annually.
"We are in difficulties now, but we are struggling to hold on to it," said Thai Cong Nguyen, director of Hue's Historical Relics and Cultural Monuments Administration Office.
"We hope in the near future the international community will help us. For now we don't have the money really to restore things. We're just trying to keep them from falling apart."
Nguyen's office, in a building constructed by Vietnam's last emperor Bao Dai, is inside the Forbidden Purple City. That is inside the larger old Imperial City, which in turn is inside the square moated citadel.
Hue was the capital of the Champa kingdom built by the Chams from the second to the 14th century. The Vietnamese destroyed Champa in the 14th century, establishing their own dynasties.
Hue's existing imperial city was constructed by the Nguyen dynasty that ruled, in name at least, from 1902 to 1945.
It was a city of 100 palaces, tombs, shrines, pagodas and temples.
But two-thirds of the royal buildings in the citadel were destroyed during the wars against the French and later the Americans.
Four of the five palaces in the imperial city were burned to the ground by a fire in 1947.
In 1968 some 10,000 people died in Hue in the fiercest battles of the Tet offensive. Viet Cong rockets and American bombs leveled whole neighborhoods.
Now in peacetime, Hue's old buildings are falling prey to storms, humidity, wood rot and decay. Lying in the typhoon belt, monuments and relics were badly damaged by two storms in 1985 and 1990 that tore tiled roofs off temples and mausoleums.
"We have so much work to do but we don't have the money," said monuments administration official Nguyen Huu Luan.
"This could all collapse," he said, strolling past pavilions with yellow and green tiled roofs topped with dragons.
Hue is a city belonging to another time.
Magnolia trees were in bloom around the Lake of Golden Waters. Two teenage girls were napping on the stone floor of the Pavilion of the Five Phoenixes.
A third sat reading near the massive Noon Gate, an entrance to the outer imperial city once reserved for the emperor.
The emperor's dozens of wives, hundreds of concubines, and warriors, mandarins, horses and elephants had to enter the imperial city by special side entrances. Any trying to pass through the Noon Gate were beheaded.