Guests renting bikes from us always ask the same thing about the Old Town ticket: which sites are worth the coupons? The Japanese Covered Bridge and an assembly hall pick themselves. For the third we usually point at the Museum of Trade Ceramics, because it is the one building that explains the other twenty — why a small Vietnamese river mouth ended up with Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese names on its maps.

What the Museum of Trade Ceramics is

The Museum of Trade Ceramics opened in 1995, with help from Japanese researchers, in the years when Hoi An was first being studied properly as an international port rather than a quiet provincial town. The Hoi An heritage authority lists 368 objects dating from the 9th–10th centuries to the 19th, most of them recovered from archaeological digs inside the Old Town itself and from the sea off Cu Lao Cham.

What makes this different from the town’s other museums is that the ceramics here are not art objects, they are evidence of trade. Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Middle Eastern wares sit side by side because the same sea route carried all of them through this harbour. Ten minutes at the cases and the town outside makes sense: of course there is a Fujianese assembly hall, of course there is a Japanese bridge.

Museum of Trade Ceramics tickets, hours and how to get in

Ticket booths sit around the edge of the protected zone — the corner of Tran Phu and Nguyen Hue is the closest one to the museum. Staff tear one coupon as you enter, so decide your three sites before you buy. Walking the streets is free; the ticket only matters when you step inside a heritage building. Prices, booths and card readers are covered in our guide to Hoi An’s smart ticket kiosks.

The two-storey house is an exhibit in itself

The Museum of Trade Ceramics occupies a classic Hoi An merchant house: front building facing Tran Phu, rear building behind, a covered bridge room between them and an open sky-well courtyard letting in light. The house was restored during the Vietnamese–Japanese cooperation of the early 1990s, and one section of the display is devoted to that restoration — which beams were replaced, how the yin-yang roof tiles were relaid.

So take the stairs slowly. From the upper floor you look down into the courtyard and across the tiled roofs of the neighbours, a view you do not get at the Japanese Covered Bridge or the assembly halls, where visitors stay at ground level. Rain makes it better rather than worse: water falling into the sky-well is peak Hoi An, and it costs nothing extra.

Four sections of the Museum of Trade Ceramics, and the shipwreck

The display at the Museum of Trade Ceramics runs in four parts, front building to rear, then upstairs:

• Hoi An and the maritime ceramic road — route maps, sample wares from each country, and the point that Hoi An was a transshipment port, not just a market.
• The house and its restoration — photographs, drawings and the timber taken out during the works.
• The Cu Lao Cham shipwreck — the section people remember.
• Archaeological sites in the Old Town — shards dug from beneath the very houses you walked past, proving trade here long before the 15th century.

The Cu Lao Cham wreck alone justifies a coupon. The site lies about 15 km north of Cu Lao Cham at roughly 80 m depth, and the ship was carrying ceramics from northern Vietnamese kilns of the 15th and 16th centuries, preserved almost intact by the seabed silt. Hand-painted blue-and-white bowls and dishes, including dragon designs first recorded at an underwater site here — meaning Vietnamese ceramics were being exported through this harbour five hundred years ago, not merely imported into it.

The whole town is a buried ceramics warehouse; this museum simply lifted a few shelves of it into the light.

Walking to the Museum of Trade Ceramics from our shop

From 84 Phan Chau Trinh it is 550 m, about seven minutes on foot, measured on Google Maps: follow Phan Chau Trinh, then turn down to Tran Phu. Do not try to ride in — the Old Town closes to motorbikes from 9:00 to 11:00 and 15:00 to 21:30. Park with us instead; we keep bikes free of charge while our renters walk the town, and you can collect yours whenever you finish.

Staying out at An Bang or Cam Thanh? Have the bike delivered to your hotel, ride to the edge of the protected zone, park there and walk the last five minutes to the Museum of Trade Ceramics.

Which sites to pair it with

With three coupons and a morning, this is the set of Old Town sites we suggest to first-time visitors — everything within 400 m of the museum door:

Afterwards, walk five minutes to Hoi An Market for lunch, or pick up the bike and ride 3 km west to Thanh Ha Pottery Village to watch the same craft still being thrown by hand — a complete morning of ceramics, old and new.

Museum of Trade Ceramics: frequently asked questions