The article deals with reception of Classical antiquity in Vietnam. While there were only few and indirect points of contact and transfer in antiquity, “classicizing”, i. e., Greek and Roman imagery found its way to Vietnam and then Indochina through the French colonial rule over the territory. In particular, French ideas of liberty, aesthetics, justice, feistiness, and prosperity and the French Republican symbol of Marianne (as allegory of France) embodying these ideas and virtues were written into the mind of the people in the territory, through education but also through architecture, money, and postage stamps. The article analyzes examples of such “classicizing” imagery in public spaces of Saigon, nowadays Ho Chi Minh City, and in the iconographies of coins, banknotes, and postage stamps. Focus is laid not only on what messages were conveyed by the use of “classicizing” columns, sculptures, and attributes but how they were framed or reframed into consistent narratives, both in French colonial times and in post-colonial Vietnam, constantly mirroring ideology, power, and control.