Vietnam has a long tradition of classical literature and poetry. The Tale of Kieu is Vietnam's national epic poem.

The Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts houses examples of Vietnam's ceramics, lacquerware, paintings, sculpture and wood carvings.

Music is an important part of life in Vietnam and there are a number of traditional orchestras and a National Symphony Orchestra.

The Vietnam National Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Hanoi National Dance Academy and Opera Houses in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are among the cultural institutions in Vietnam.

Music
Traditional: Through heavily influenced by the Chinese and, in the South, the Khmer and Indiannised Cham musical traditions, Vietnamese music has a high degree of originality in style and instrumentation. The traditional system of writing down music and five note scale are of Chinese origin. Vietnamese choral music is unique in that the melody must correspond to the tones, it can not rise during a word that has a falling tone. There are three broad categories of Vietnamese music:

Folk includes children's songs, love songs, work songs, festival songs, lullabies, lamentations instrumental accompaniment.

Classical is rather rigid and formal. It was performed at the imperial court and for the entertainment of the mandarin elite. A traditional orchestra consists of 40 musicians. There are two main types of classical chamber music: Hat A Dao (from the North) and ca Hue (from the Central Vietnam)

Theatre includes singing, dancing and instrumentation. There are music conservations teaching traditional Vietnamese and Western classical music in Hanoi, Hue and Ho Chi Minh City.

Each of Vietnam's ethno-linguistic minorities also have their own musical traditional that often include distinctive costumes and instruments such as reed flutes, litho-phones, bamboo whistles, gongs and stringed instruments made from gourds.

Architecture

The Vietnamese have not been prolific builders like their neighbours the Khmers, who erected the monuments of Angkor in Cambodia, and the Chams, whose graceful brick towers, constructed using sophistic cated masonry technology, adorn many parts of the southern half of the country.

Most of Vietnamese constructions are traditionally made of wood and other materials that are vulnerable to decay in the tropical climate. This, coupled with the fact that almost all stone structures erected by the Vietnamese have been destroyed in countless feudal wars and invasions, means that very little pre-modern Vietnamese architecture remains.

Plenty of pagodas and temples founded hundreds of years ago are still functioning but they have usually been rebuilt many times with little concern for making the upgraded structure an exact copy of the original. As a result, many modern elements have been casually introduced into pagoda architecture-the neon haloes for statues of Buddha is one of the most glaring examples.

Because of the Vietnamese custom of ancestor worship, many graves from previous centuries survive today. There include temples erected in memory of high-ranking mandarins, royal family members and emperors.

Memorials for Vietnamese who died in the wars against the Chinese, French and Americans usually contain cement obelisks inscribed with the words 'To Quoc Ghi Cong". Many of the tombstones within the memorials were erected over empty graves, most Viet Minh and Viet Cong dead were buried where they fell.