Place · Nawab palace on the Buriganga · Bangladesh
Ahsan Manzil, Dhaka
Also known as Ahsān Mônjil, Ahsan Manzil Palace, Pink Palace, Rangmahal
Ahsan Manzil is the Indo-Saracenic riverfront palace of the Nawabs of Dhaka on the Buriganga, built in 1859–1872 by Khwaja Abdul Ghani and named after his son Ahsanullah. The site had been a Mughal-era zamindar's garden house and then a French trading post before Khwaja Alimullah bought it in 1830. Rebuilt after a tornado in 1888, it decayed after 1952 and was restored by 1992 as a museum of the Bangladesh National Museum.
- Date
- 1859–1872
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.709, 90.406
Worth knowing
Its central dome rises to about 27 metres and is built up over squinches so that it swells like a lotus bud. The All India Muslim League emerged from this property.
About the place
Placed at the coordinates given on the Wikipedia article.
Connections (2)
- Site withinDhaka
Ahsan Manzil stands at Kumartoli on the bank of the Buriganga in Old Dhaka, facing the river with a stairway leading up to its portico. It was the official residence and administrative seat of the Nawabs of Dhaka in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the British made the riverfront the centre of the colonial city and Bengali aristocrats lined it with palaces and mansions such as Ahsan Manzil and Ruplal House.
- Site adjacencyStar Mosque, Dhaka
Ahsan Manzil at Kumartoli and the Star Mosque at Armanitola stand about a kilometre apart in Old Dhaka, the river-port city that drew Portuguese, French, Dutch, British and Armenian traders. The palace site itself passed from a Mughal-era zamindar to French traders before the Nawab family bought it in 1830. Both buildings took their present form from the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century elites of the old city, landed and mercantile.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Ahsan Manzil", "Port of Dhaka".
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