Tan Ky Old House, Hoi An

Is Tan Ky House included in the Hoi An Old Town ticket?

Yes — and that's the only way in. Staff tear off one coupon of your Old Town ticket at the door; there's no ticket booth at the house itself. The Hoi An Heritage Management Centre sells two versions, 80,000 VND and 120,000 VND, both valid for up to three days, and under-16s go free.

The 80,000 VND ticket covers the Ancient Town, a compulsory coupon for either the Japanese Covered Bridge or Quan Cong Temple, plus two sites of your choice. The 120,000 VND ticket adds a museum and gives three sites of your choice. Tan Ky is one of those choice sites. Da Nang's 2026 price table labels the same two amounts as the Vietnamese and foreign-visitor prices, so ask at the booth which ticket you're getting.

Booths stand at the entrances to the Ancient Town, including one by the Japanese Bridge, and they take cash in dong. Foreign Visa and Mastercard cards are fine in hotels and bigger restaurants, but street food, markets and small shops are cash only. Grab, the main ride-hailing app, takes cash or a linked foreign card.

What is Tan Ky Old House?

It's a private merchant's house in the middle of Hoi An's Ancient Town, dated by Da Nang's tourism board to the late 18th century, when the port was booming. Many guidebooks — and Wikidata — give a precise year, 1741, but no official source we checked confirms it. The 1992 heritage record simply says "more than 200 years old".

Like most Hoi An shophouses it's a "tube house": narrow at the front and very deep, built as several sections one behind another. It runs right through the block from Nguyen Thai Hoc Street to Bach Dang Street on the river. The shop faced the street, while goods came in by boat at the back. According to the heritage record, the house was once a shop, a warehouse, a family home and rented space all at once; today it is a home and the Le family's ancestral chapel, Lê Từ đường.

The frame is jackfruit, ironwood and kiền kiền timber, carved by craftsmen from Kim Bong village across the river. You can read three building traditions in it: a Vietnamese post-and-beam frame, Chinese lacquered boards and couplets, and Japanese-style joinery in the roof. The house was taken under protection in 1985 and received its Ministry of Culture certificate in 1990; Da Nang's tourism board calls it the first home in Hoi An to be given this status.

What to see inside

• The wooden street front — panels of fitted planks between square posts, with a pair of yin-yang "door eyes" above the main door to watch over the house.
• Carved stone column bases shaped like lotus flowers. Each post sits on its own stone instead of in the ground, which keeps the timber dry.
• The "crab shell" ceiling — a curved roof truss that makes the front room feel wider. Look for the brackets carved as two crossed swords wrapped in a silk ribbon, and the fish-shaped ends of the eave supports.
• A trapdoor in the ceiling above the entrance, a metre square. Sacks of goods were hoisted through it to the storeroom upstairs — easy to miss unless you look up.
• Fine carving of the "eight treasures" with plum blossom, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo, and on the gallery, bats circling the character for "precious" — bats stand for good fortune in Chinese symbolism.
• Mother-of-pearl couplets more than two metres long, and the "hundred birds" panel, where each of the 100 strokes is drawn as a bird. There's also a four-character board presented by Emperor Bảo Đại.
• The open-air courtyard — the house has no street windows, so this is where light and air come in. It's paved with big stone slabs, while the rooms have Bat Trang brick floors.
• The Confucius cup in a glass case; Da Nang's tourism board puts its age at 550–600 years.

What the visit is like

Short and simple. You hand over a coupon at the door and walk through the front room to the courtyard and the back of the house. A family member or a guide usually gives a quick talk on the family, the trade and the carpentry; large tour groups get their own guide's version. The upper floor is the family's home and stays closed.

Treat it as someone's house with an ancestral altar, not a museum. Keep your voice down, don't sit on the old furniture and leave the altar alone. Photos are fine; switch off the flash and step aside during the talk so people can pass. There's no air-conditioning, so on hot days come early.

The tour ends at a small souvenir corner. Buying anything is entirely optional. If something catches your eye, haggle calmly — in Ancient Town shops a fair opening offer is around half the asking price.

Is Tan Ky House worth it, and how long do you need?

Yes, if you want to see one Hoi An house from the inside rather than just the façades — it's the best-known of the old merchant homes and shows how shop, store, home and altar all fit into one narrow building. Plan on 15–25 minutes: only the ground floor is open, so it doesn't take long.

It's less rewarding at midday, when the rooms fill up and the talk happens on the move. And if you've already seen another old house on your ticket, you might prefer to spend the coupon on the Fujian Assembly Hall or a museum. The easy way to fit it in is right after the Japanese Bridge on a west-to-east walk.

Tan Ky House vs the Japanese Bridge and Fujian Assembly Hall

All three are within a 10-minute walk of each other, and a single 80,000 VND ticket covers the bridge plus both of the others.

Hoi An's history, compared

Hoi An's historic sights rated by YesGo. Tap a column heading to sort.

Nearby — add to your day

34

Hoi An Ancient Town

Hoi An, Vietnam

3 h · 80,000–120,000 VND; streets free · 3 min walk

Yes — add to my route: Hoi An Ancient Town

40

Japanese Covered Bridge

Hoi An, Vietnam

20 min · Old Town ticket: 80,000–120,000 VND · 4 min walk

Yes — add to my route: Japanese Covered Bridge

44

Hoi An Night Market

Hoi An, Vietnam

1 h · Free entry · 4 min walk

Yes — add to my route: Hoi An Night Market

44

Hoi An Central Market

Hoi An, Vietnam

45 min · Free entry · 7 min walk

Yes — add to my route: Hoi An Central Market

How to do it right

• Go at 8:00: the house is open, but the Japanese Bridge only opens for crossing at 9:00 — you'll fit both in before the crowds.
• Choice coupons run out fast. Decide in advance whether an old house, an assembly hall or a museum matters most to you.
• Look up as you walk in — the trapdoor for hauling goods is right above the entrance.
• The marks on the posts at the back show how high the river has risen in past flood seasons.
• In autumn, during the rainy season, the streets by the river sometimes go under water and old houses close for those days — check at the ticket booth.
• The souvenir corner at the end is optional; your coupon doesn't depend on it.

Questions