The Nawabs' pink palace on the bank of the Buriganga, restored room by room as a museum of nineteenth-century Dhaka.
Ahsan Manzil was built between 1859 and 1872 as the residence of Nawab Abdul Ghani, who named it after his son Khwaja Ahsanullah. For half a century it was the centre of political and social life in Dhaka. The tornado of 1888 wrecked much of the building and the domed rotunda seen today dates from the rebuilding that followed.
The palace fell into disrepair after the Nawab estate was broken up. The government acquired it, restored it to its 1888 appearance and opened it as a museum in 1992. It is run as a branch of the Bangladesh National Museum.
Twenty-three rooms are open, several of them furnished as they were photographed in the Nawabs' time — the drawing room, the dining hall, the card room, the Hindustani room — alongside galleries of portraits, glassware and household objects. The lawn in front runs down to the Buriganga.
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