Đien Bien Phu Martyr's Cemetery is located at the bottom of the A1 Hill, opposite the Đien Bien Phu Historical Victory Museum. Peoples and visitors often come here to honour heroic martyrs as the Vietnamese tradition "When drinking water, think of its source."
The Đien Bien Phu Martyrs' Cemetery was built in 1958 to gather 644 graves of heroic soldiers in the Đien Bien Phu campaign. Most of them are anonymous graves. After Dien Bien liberation, the Government has chosen the most beautiful valleys to build the martyrs’ cemetery. The names of each martyr were carved on the gravestone with all respect and affection. However, the unpredicted floods passed through the valley and took away all the gravestones. There were only four indentified graves of famous heroic martyrs: Tô Vĩnh Diện, Phan Đình Giót, Bế Văn Đàn and Trần Can
The A1 Cemetery has a surrounding wall of 6m high and 120m long. In the middle of the wall is a stage of 16m high with Khue Van Pavillion structure. There is a hanging bronze bell, so that visitors can shake it to notice the martyrs’ souls in the cemetery. The cemetery follows ancient- wall architecture with a moat of 6m wide and 1,000m long. There were three bridges over the moat, similar to the booby- trenches in the ancient city.
The front wall is embossed with two reliefs. The 1st one demonstrates 55 days and nights of fighting in Đien Bien Phu, the other one represents 9 years of the French war. The golden plates with names of martyrs are hung on the backside wall. The letters are molten by cast iron, covering with bronze sparkle.
On the left side of the cemetery, there is a stilt house follows the north-west Thai style. The Memorial house in the cemetery is designed with stilt house roofs style and white stone wall. The epitaph and bronze incense burner are placed inside the house.
On the right side of the memorial house is the "Soldier statues”. On the left is the grateful statue by sculptor Le Duc Lai and Ta Quang Bien. The cemetery is covered by many trees and flowers on the side-paths.