The History Museum building dates from the French colonial period. Designed and built by the architect Ernest Hebrard in 1925, it functioned originally as the Museum of the ecole Francaise dExtreme-Orient. Unlike the Hanoi Opera House, which is purely and unabashedly French in inspiration and style, Hebrard pioneered a new hybrid style of architecture he termed indochinoise which was intended to incorporate elements of Vietnamese, Khmer and French architecture. Anchored by an octagonal pagoda, the building is painted ochre-yellow, offset by dark green shutters and is ornamented with fanciful colonnades, brackets and balustrades. It is one of the best museums in Vietnam, with fine collections of artefacts from the early Dong Son culture of the Red River Delta and the Oc Eo culture of the Mekong Delta, as well as from the Kingdoms of Champa and Cambodia.