Museum of Trade Ceramics

The Museum of Trade Ceramics tells the story of Hoi An as a trading port through the objects that passed through it. When the town was known to foreign merchants as Faifo, pottery was one of the main goods traded here, and the museum gathers pieces made in Chinese, Thai and Japanese kilns that were found in the area.

The collection numbers about 430 ceramic artefacts dating from between the 13th and 17th centuries. Many are fragments of decorative or everyday pieces rather than complete vessels, which gives a realistic picture of the everyday goods that passed through a working port rather than only its showpieces. Each display has an explanation of the background of the objects, so the museum is informative even without a guide.

The building itself is part of the attraction. The museum occupies a two-storey house constructed in traditional Vietnamese style, with an anteroom and an inner courtyard that are open to visitors, so you can see how a typical old-town house was organised from street front to back. It is one of several museums in the old town run under the Hoi An heritage conservation system.

The museum is open every day from 08:00 to 17:00. Entry is covered by the Hoi An Ancient Town ticket, and the museums are part of the higher ticket option, so if you plan to visit several museums it is worth choosing that version. The museum is compact, so a visit fits easily between other sites on the same street.

The location makes it easy to combine with other heritage sites. It is at 80 Tran Phu Street, the main street of the old town, a short walk from the Fujian Assembly Hall at number 46 and Quan Cong Temple at number 24, with the Japanese Covered Bridge at the western end of the same street. Visiting the ceramics museum before or after the assembly halls helps explain why Chinese, Japanese and other merchant communities came to Hoi An in the first place, and what kinds of goods they were trading in the centuries when Faifo was one of the busiest ports on this coast.