Famous Landmarks in Dhaka
Mughal forts and a Nawab's riverside palace anchor Old Dhaka's dense, waterside quarter.
Dhaka's landmarks cluster in the old city along the Buriganga River, within walking distance of one another despite belonging to different centuries. Lalbagh Fort, begun in 1678, dates from Dhaka's decades as a Mughal provincial capital, when the city's muslin trade made it wealthy enough for a prince and a provincial governor to start a fortified palace they never finished; its walls carry the pink-red tones typical of that architecture. Ahsan Manzil, raised on the riverbank two centuries later, reflects the Indo-Saracenic taste of the Nawab family who then administered the city. Star Mosque, tucked in nearby Armanitola, is smaller and more private: an early-nineteenth-century mosque whose builder covered it in star-patterned tilework rather than scale.
Lalbagh Fort
1678
A walled, unfinished Mughal fort compound holding a governor's house, a tomb and a mosque, laced with lawns, fountains and water channels. Its south side keeps two gateways built as grand arches in the style of major Mughal forts, and its name, meaning Red Garden, echoes the pink-red tones typical of that architecture.
Begun in 1678 as the residence of the governor of Mughal Bengal, the fort was originally called Fort Aurangabad. Construction started under Prince Muhammad Azam Shah, a son of Emperor Aurangzeb, and continued under the provincial governor Shaista Khan after the prince was recalled. Work stopped when Shaista Khan's daughter, Pari Bibi, died and was buried within the walls, an event he took as a bad omen. The unfinished complex includes the governor's house, her tomb, and a mosque, set among lawns and water channels.
- It began construction under the name Fort Aurangabad, only later taking the name of its neighbourhood, Lalbagh.
- Its layout was modelled as a smaller version of grand Mughal forts such as the Red Fort and Fatehpur Sikri.
Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Shmunmun assumed (based on copyright claims). (Public domain)
Ahsan Manzil
1872
A riverside palace built in the Indo-Saracenic style directly above the Buriganga's bank. It survives today as a museum, its rooms arranged to display the furnishings and belongings of the family that once governed from within it.
Built in 1872 on the bank of the Buriganga River in the Kumartoli area, Ahsan Manzil served as the official residence and administrative seat of the Nawab of Dhaka through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was raised in the Indo-Saracenic style favoured for grand residences of the period. Designated an Old Dhaka Heritage Site, the palace is now preserved as a museum under the Bangladesh National Museum, its rooms holding artefacts tied to the Nawab family and to the city's wider social and political history.
Photo: Md. Ahsanul Haque Nayem (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Star Mosque
early 19th century
A small mosque whose facades and interior are covered in ornate mosaic work built up from repeated blue five-pointed stars rather than the domes or minarets that usually draw the eye on a mosque. The star pattern alone is what identifies the building.
Standing in the Armanitola area of the old city, Star Mosque, also called Tara Masjid, was built in the first half of the nineteenth century by Mirza Golam Pir, also known as Mirza Ahmed Jan. Its facades and interior surfaces are covered in ornate decoration built up from repeated motifs of blue five-pointed stars, applied across walls that might otherwise carry plain plasterwork. The star pattern, rather than any dome or minaret, is what identifies the building at a glance.
- The mosque's star motif is distinctive enough to appear on Bangladesh's five-taka banknote.
- It is also known by its Bengali name, Tara Masjid.
Photo: Ishtiaque Ayub Zico. (CC BY-SA 2.5)
History
Dhaka has been settled since the first millennium, but its built character was set from 1608, when the Mughal Empire made it a provincial capital of Bengal, renaming it Jahangirnagar. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was a hub of the muslin trade and one of the wealthiest cities in the empire, drawing merchants from across Eurasia and a Mughal elite that included princes and the sons of emperors, wealth visible in projects like Lalbagh Fort, begun in 1678 as a governor's residence and never completed. After Mughal authority receded, a new elite shaped the nineteenth-century city: the Nawab family built their riverside residence, Ahsan Manzil, in 1872, while smaller, privately funded buildings such as Star Mosque added their own ornament to the old quarters around them.