Located right in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City is the most famous landmark as well as core Cathedral of the city, Notre Dame Cathedral (meaning as: Nhà thờ Đức Bà Sài Gòn).

Notre Dame Cathedral, or Notre-Dame Basilica to be exact, is a famous age-long cathedral in Southern Vietnam. It is a magnificent building located at the Paris Square in Ho Chi Minh City downtown, attracting not only Catholics but also most tourists for its neo-Romanesque style architecture and a sacred atmosphere.

According the French conquest of Nam Bo (CochinChina) and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), the Roman Catholic Church established a community and religious services for French colonialists. The first church was built on today’s Ngo Duc Ke Street. There had been a Vietnamese pagoda, which had been abandoned during the war. Bishop Lefevre decided to make this pagoda a church. The last church was too small. Therefore Admiral Bonard decided to build a wooden church on the bank of Charner canal in 1863. Lefevre put the first stone for construction of the church on 28 March 1863. The construction was completed two years later and was called “Saigon Church”. When the wooden church was damaged by termites, all church services were held in the guest-chamber of the French Governor's Palace. This palace would later be turned into a seminary until the Notre-Dame Cathedral was completed. After the design competition, bids were accepted for construction. Again, J. Bourad was the successful bidder and became supervisor of constructions. Originally, there were three proposed sites for construction:

-    On the site of the former test school (nowadays, this is at the corner of Le Duan Boulevard and Hai Ba Trung Street)

-    At Kinh Lon (nowadays, it is Nguyen Hue Boulevard) 

-    At the present site where the cathedral is situated.

All building materials were imported from France. The outside wall of the cathedral was built with bricks from Marseille. Although the contractor did not use coated concrete, these bricks have retained their bright red color till today. On 7 October 1877, Bishop Isidore Colombert laid the first stone in an inaugural ceremony. The construction of the cathedral took three years. On Easter Day, 11 April 1880, a blessing ceremony and ceremony of completion were solemnly organized in presence of the Governor of Nam Bo Charles Le Myre De Vilers. One can see the granite plate inside the main entry gate commemorating the start and completion dates and designer. The total cost was 2,500,000 French francs (at that time price). At the beginning, the cathedral was called State Cathedral due to source of the construction cost.

In 1895, two bell towers were added to the cathedral, each 57.6 m high with six bronze bells with the total weight of 28.85 metric tonnes. The crosses were installed on the top of each tower of 3.5 m high, 2 m wide, 600kg in weight. The total height of the cathedral to the top of the Cross is 60.5 m. In the flower garden in front of the cathedral, there was a bronze statue of Pigneau de Behaine leading Prince Canh, the son of Emperor Gia Long by his right hand. The statue was made in France. In 1945, the statue was removed, but the foundation remains.

In 1959, Bishop Joseph Pham Van Thien, whose jurisdiction included Saigon parish, attended the Holy Mother Congress held in Vatican and ordered a Peaceful Notre Dame statue made with granite in Rome. When the statue arrived in Saigon on 16 February 1959, Bishop Pham Van Thien held a ceremony to install the statue on the empty base and presented the title of "Regina Pacis". It was the same bishop who wrote the prayers “Notre-Dame bless the peace to Vietnam”. The next day, Cardinal Aganianian came from Rome to chair the closing ceremony of the Holy Mother Congress and solemnly chaired the ceremony for the statue, thus the cathedral was then-on called Notre Dame Cathedral.