Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 2025 at Thang Long Imperial Citadel

In order to preserve and promote intangible cultural values, from October 1, the Thang Long - Hanoi Heritage Conservation Center organized the Mid-Autumn Festival 2025 Program. This is an annual activity on the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival serving children, people of the capital and tourists from all over the world with many rich activities such as displaying, experiencing making traditional Mid-Autumn toys, performing lion dances...

Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the major festivals of the Vietnamese people, taking place in the middle of autumn. This is the time when the crops have been harvested, the weather is cool, so people often give thanks and hold festivals to have fun.

Since the Ly Dynasty, Mid-Autumn Festival has become a major festival in Thang Long citadel, solemnly organized by the king, taking place simultaneously in the royal court and among the people. The festival takes place with many activities: offering offerings to the former emperors; civil and military mandarins presenting congratulatory messages to the king; holding banquets; organizing boat races on Truong Lo river (Nhi river, Hong river); water puppetry performances; tiger hunting competitions... The royal court opens the festival for people to enjoy for three days, usually from the 10th to the 15th of the 8th lunar month. Everywhere in Thang Long citadel is decorated with brocade, lights and flowers. People from old to young, men and women all eagerly invite each other to watch the festival.

Exhibition space at the Thang Long Heritage Conservation Center - Hanoi

In addition to important royal ceremonies, our people have the custom of worshiping ancestors during the day, hanging lanterns and setting up offerings to enjoy the moon at night, children carrying lanterns, beating drums and dancing with lions... These customs have been passed down through generations and have become a beautiful cultural feature of the nation.

In order to preserve and promote those intangible cultural values, from October 1, the Thang Long - Hanoi Heritage Conservation Center organized the program "Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 2025". This is an annual activity on the occasion of Mid-Autumn Festival serving children, people of the capital and tourists from all over the world with many rich activities such as displaying, experiencing making traditional Mid-Autumn toys, lion dance performances...

The Mid-Autumn Festival 2025 program has two display topics: Traditional Mid-Autumn Festival and Royal Mid-Autumn Festival of the Ly Dynasty.

The old Mid-Autumn Festival space

In particular, the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival display space includes booths of ancient Mid-Autumn Festival toys such as lion drums, frog drums, rattles, lion heads, papier-mâché masks, tin toys (tin ships, drum-beating rabbits, push-pushing butterflies, whistles...), paper doctors, moon-watching stick-players, lanterns, monk lanterns, star lanterns, paper animals... Among them, the most attractive are the ancient lamp models that have been restored by Thanh Oai village artisans through photo sources of the Quai Branly Museum (French Republic); French Institute of the Far East such as drum lamps, rabbit lamps, star lamps, shrimp and fish lamps, double-cu lanterns... made from wind paper or cellophane, painted in very vivid and soulful colors.

In the section of the Royal Mid-Autumn Festival of the Ly Dynasty, this year, for the first time, the Center organized an exhibition explaining the Royal Mid-Autumn Festival of the 11th-12th century with a system of panels introducing historical documents and a system of paintings recreating the activities that took place during the Royal Mid-Autumn Festival more than 1,000 years ago.

Traditional Mid-Autumn Festival toys are displayed here.

The exhibition space is highlighted by artifacts recreating scenes of boat racing and water puppetry of soldiers and people. In which the central artifact "Kim Ngao" carries 3 fairy mountains on its back, very similar to the image of a mascot with a dragon-headed turtle body, its whole body covered in golden gold, carrying on its back 3 fairy mountains of Bong Lai, Phuong Truong, and Doanh Chau in the ancient legend of Eastern culture. The image of Kim Ngao is the expression of the king and the people's wish for a peaceful , prosperous, and sustainable country.

The display space is shimmering with ancient colors, lit by dozens of lanterns bearing the mark of ancient culture such as carp lanterns to ward off evil spirits, carp lanterns to transform into dragons, dragon-phoenix lanterns, unicorn lanterns, peach-pomegranate-Buddha-hand lanterns, water chestnut lanterns... These are lanterns that were lost and have now been restored by cultural researcher Trinh Bach and artisan Nguyen Trong Binh from traditional materials such as do paper, crepe paper, cellophane, bamboo strips, rattan, glue...

Tourists experience Mid-Autumn Festival at Thang Long Heritage Conservation Center - Hanoi

In addition, at the Thang Long - Hanoi Heritage Conservation Center, there is also a colorful check-in space, with many impressive angles: a brilliant flower-lit gate, a funny tray wall, a cluster of goldfish playing with the moon in a lotus pond, a magical, shimmering street of lights...

Along with the exhibition spaces, visitors also have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the festive atmosphere with a series of exciting activities such as: lion dance performances, Mid-Autumn Festival toy making experiences (spinning lanterns, butterfly lanterns, star lanterns, rabbit lanterns, painting papier-mâché masks, paper kites...), on October 4-5, 2025.

The above activities have increased the attractiveness and uniqueness of the heritage, helping visitors understand more deeply the intangible cultural values ​​of the royal court, helping to connect the heritage with the community more./.

Source: https://bvhttdl.gov.vn/vui-tet-trung-thu-2025-tai-hoang-thanh-thang-long-20250930082036401.htm