Hanoi's Old Quarter is a thousand years of trade squeezed into a few dozen streets, and it is loud, crowded, fragrant and completely alive. This walk starts at the twin towers of St Joseph's Cathedral, loops along the shore of Hoàn Kiếm Lake to a temple on an island, then dives north into the merchant streets, past a restored shophouse, the city's oldest temple and its last surviving gate, to the great covered market. It finishes up on the deck of Long Biên Bridge, a century-old ironwork crossing where trains still rumble past people on foot. It is a little over three kilometers and flat the whole way, one of the most absorbing self-guided walking tours you can do in Southeast Asia, because almost nothing here is behind glass. The street itself is the museum.

Before you set off

The walking takes under an hour, but give it three, because you will want to step inside the temples and the old house, and Hanoi is a city that rewards stopping for a coffee or a bowl of noodles on a tiny plastic stool. The ground is flat. The challenge is the traffic. Pavements in the Old Quarter double as motorbike parking, kitchens and living rooms, so you will often walk along the edge of the road. To cross, walk slowly and steadily, without stopping, stepping back or breaking into a run. Riders judge your pace and flow around you, and a sudden move is what confuses them. Hanoi has real seasons. From roughly May to September it is hot and very humid, with heavy afternoon downpours, so start early and carry water. The winter months can be cool, grey and drizzly, so bring a layer. Temples ask for covered shoulders and knees. Some sights charge a small entry fee and keep their own hours, so check before you go. On weekend evenings the streets around the lake are usually closed to traffic, which makes for a gentler stroll.

St Joseph's Cathedral

Stand in the little square in front of St Joseph's Cathedral and look up at the two square bell towers, darkened by more than a century of tropical rain. Locals simply call it Nhà Thờ Lớn, the Big Church. The French finished it in 1886, in the early years of their rule, and it was designed in the neo-Gothic style with a clear nod to Notre-Dame de Paris, from the twin towers to the round rose window between them. The site was not empty when they arrived. A Buddhist pagoda called Báo Thiên, with a famous tall tower dating back to the eleventh century, once stood near here, and it was cleared to make way for the church, a reminder of whose city this had become. Today it is the seat of the Archbishop of Hanoi and very much a working church, with Masses through the week and packed congregations on Sundays. If the doors are open, step inside for the stained glass and the cool, dim nave. Then look around the square, where young Hanoians sit on low stools sipping iced lemon tea, trà chanh, and chatting for hours. From the front of the church, walk east along Nhà Thờ street to the lake, then follow the lakeside path north around the water to a red bridge on the far shore. Allow ten minutes.

Ngoc Son Temple

Hoàn Kiếm Lake, Hanoi You are on the eastern shore of Hoàn Kiếm Lake, the Lake of the Returned Sword. The legend goes that in the fifteenth century a magic sword helped the leader Lê Lợi drive out the armies of the Ming dynasty, and that after his victory, as he was boating on this lake, a golden turtle rose from the water, took the sword in its mouth and carried it back to the depths. Look for the small, weathered Turtle Tower on its own island in the middle of the lake. Before you cross the scarlet Thê Húc Bridge, whose name means roughly the place where morning light rests, notice the stone tower shaped like a calligrapher's brush. Its characters read "writing on the blue sky", and the gate beyond is carved like an ink stone. Across the bridge, Ngọc Sơn, the Temple of the Jade Mountain, honors Trần Hưng Đạo, the general who turned back the Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century, along with a patron god of scholars. In a side room sits the temple's strangest treasure, the preserved body of a giant softshell turtle taken from the lake in 1968, as long as a person is tall. The lake's last known turtle died in 2016, and Hanoians mourned it. Cross back over the bridge, walk a few steps along the shore road, and turn north up Hàng Bè, which becomes Mã Mây after Hàng Bạc. About six minutes.

Heritage House 87 Ma May

Look for number 87 on the left side of Mã Mây, a narrow wooden shopfront that opens into something surprisingly deep. This is a tube house, nhà ống, the classic building of the Old Quarter. The usual explanation for their shape is that shops were once taxed by the width of their frontage, so merchants built narrow at the front and long toward the back, some running dozens of meters deep. Step in and walk through it slowly. The front room was the shop, open to the street. Behind it come small open courtyards that let in light and air and catch the rain, then the living rooms, a kitchen at the back, and upstairs the family altar with its incense and photographs of ancestors. This house dates from the late nineteenth century and belonged to merchants. Later, like many houses here, it was shared among several households, and it was carefully restored at the end of the 1990s in a partnership between Hanoi and the French city of Toulouse. The dark carved timber and the hush inside are a sharp contrast with the street outside. Notice how cool it stays, and you will understand why the design lasted. Keep walking north to the end of Mã Mây and turn left onto Hàng Buồm. Look for a temple gate tucked between the shopfronts, about four minutes away.