Place · raja's palace-fort · Pakistan
Shigar Fort (Fong Khar)
Fong Khar, the palace on the rock, built around the seventeenth century by the Amacha rajas of Shigar in the valley that leads up towards the Baltoro glacier and K2. It is Balti building at its most accomplished: stone and timber cribbage with carved wooden pillars, lintels and balconies whose vocabulary comes from Kashmir by way of Buddhist Baltistan. The Aga Khan Trust restored it between 1999 and 2004, keeping part as a museum and running the rest as a hotel.
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 35.423, 75.742
Worth knowing
The restoration deliberately left one wing as found, so a visitor can see the carpentry both conserved and unconserved in the same building — a decision that has since been copied at Khaplu and Altit.
Connections (2)
- In the same set asBaltit Fort, Hunza
Baltit, Shigar, Altit and Khaplu are the Karakoram palace-forts, and they are one building tradition: dry stone with timber cribbage laced horizontally through the walls against earthquakes, flat roofs, carved wooden pillars and lintels in a vocabulary that comes from Kashmir by way of Buddhist Baltistan. Baltit is the Hunza Mirs' and the oldest; Shigar is the Amacha rajas' of the Baltoro valley. All were restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture between 1990 and 2011, which is why any of them still stand.
- In the same set asKhaplu Palace (Yabgo Khar)
Shigar and Khaplu were the seats of two of the Balti royal houses, the Amacha and the Yabgo, and their buildings bracket the end of Balti independence. Shigar's Fong Khar is seventeenth-century, built while the rajas were sovereign. Khaplu's palace was built about 1840, immediately after the Dogra conquest destroyed the fort on the ridge above it — so it is what a Balti raja built once he was a feudatory rather than a ruler, with the Kashmiri elements of the woodwork noticeably more prominent.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Shigar Palace”. Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Shigar Fort Residence conservation reports (1999–2004).
Open Shigar Fort (Fong Khar) in the repository →