Rose Garden Palace

Rose Garden was built in the late nineteenth century by Hrishikesh Das, a landowner who, the story goes, put up his own rose garden and mansion after being slighted at a rival zamindar's garden party. It later passed to Khan Bahadur Kazi Abdur Rashid and was known for a time as Rashid Manzil.

The house is a piece of theatre: white columns in the Greek manner, marble statues along the façade, a pond with a paved bank, and a field with a fountain at its centre, edged by rows of rose bushes. Inside, a wooden staircase set with coloured glass climbs to the upper floor, where four of the five rooms are open — among them the old ballroom, a long hall under chandeliers. The ground-floor rooms stay closed.

In June 1949 a political convention held in these grounds founded the party that became the Awami League, which is why the house turns up so often in accounts of the country's politics.

The government bought the property in 2018 and the Department of Archaeology restored it. It reopened to visitors on 30 July 2025 and has drawn a steady stream of them since.