The Chief Architect's Office has also imposed restrictions on development around Hoan Kiem Lake to protect the area's French legacy. A thirty-two meter (eight-story) height limit has sent a number of building projects, like Hanoi Plaza which was to have been completed in 1998, back to the drawing board. An added irony is that new buildings, such as the Hanoi Hilton Opera hotel next door to the former Opera House, are now also required to be built in a French vein, and to be a shade of ochre.

Those who think they are in the know say that Hanoi's French architectural style is Bordeaux is only partly accurate. In Hanoi, the style may be French classical but with a touch of something else as concessions have been made to time and place. For example, the prominent architecture of the History Museum (one block behind the Opera House and built in the 1930's by l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient) is a fanciful blend of Vietnamese palace and French Villa which came to be called "Neo-Vietnamese."
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South of Trang Tien Stree, the main artery of the French Quarter ending in front of the Opera House, was known as Ville Francaise. It was French Hanoi's residential enclave consisting of a grid of shaded boulevards whose distinguished villas are now much sought after for restoration as embassies, offices or expatriate residences. These houses run the gamut of early twentieth century French architecture from elegant Neo-Classical through 1930s Modernism and Art Deco, with an occasional Oriental flourish.
Immediately north of Hoan Kiem Lake is the congested yet vibrant Old Quarter, which dates from the 15th century when Hanoi was known as the city of thirty-six streets and guilds. This area, the French called Cite Indigene, is also dotted with dilapidated mustard colored structures, with green shutters over traditional long and narrow Chinese dwellings. The French overlay, here on a previous existing cultural mélange, with temples and shrines around St.
Joseph's Cathedral, borders on the surreal. Here, like elsewhere in Hanoi, local residents have embraced and maintained the café mentality of the French. Hanoians are prolific coffee drinkers, which has spawned hundreds of cafes over the last few years. Some of them hole-in the-wall, others elegant with French names like Le Café Des Arts, advertising itself as " looking like the 'Lain Quarter in Paris'," which, with a bit of imagination, is not too far off the mark. Signs in surrounding shop windows declare, "Ici on parle Francaise" - French is spoken here.The subtle burgeoning French renaissance in Hanoi however, does not detract from, nor overwhelm what is essentially an Oriental, and whether the Vietnamese like to admit it or not, a Chinese city. Its very name is a legacy of China which ruled Vietnam for a thousand years until 939 AD. The reserved and deferring Confucian attitude of Hanoians is reinforced by the revered historic Temple of Literature, and intact sprawling complex of structures of past Confucian studies and examinations which was Hanoi's first university. Erected in 1070, the five walled courtyards are modeled on the ground plan of Confucius' birthplace in Qufu China. Along with other, old, distinctly Oriental Structures, it stands as counterpoint in a corner of Asia where architecturally at least, West poignantly meets East.