Its industries include cotton-spinning, brewing, distilling, and the manufacture of tobacco, earthenware and matches; native industry produces carved and inlaid furniture, bronzes and artistic metalwork, silk embroidery, &c. Hanoi is the junction of railways to Hai-Phong, its seaport, Lao-Kay, Vinh, and the Chinese frontier via Lang-Son.
Milchhdfer (Anfdnge der Kunst) had called attention to certain remarkable examples of archaic Greek bronze-work, and the subsequent discovery of the votive bronzes in the cave of Zeus on Mount Ida, and notably the shields with their fine embossed designs, shows that by the 8th century B.C. Cretan technique in metal not only held its own beside imported Cypro-Phoenician work, but was distinctly ahead of that of the rest of Greece (Halbherr, Bronzi del antro di Zeus Ideo).
The island first attracted the notice of archaeologists by the remarkable archaic Greek bronzes found in a cave on Mount Ida in 1885, as well as by epigraphic monuments such as the famous law of Gortyna; but the first undoubted Aegean remains reported from it were a few objects extracted from Cnossus by Minos Kalokhairinos of Candia in 1878.
Numbers of statues - among them a series of draped and richlycoloured female figures - masterpieces of painted pottery, only equalled by the Attic vases found in Magna Grecia and Etruria, and numerous bronzes, were among the treasures of art now brought to light.
The former wealth of the town is mainly proved by the discoveries made in its extensive necropolis from 1828 onwards - Greek vases, bronzes and other remains - many of which are now in the Vatican.