Dhaka

Dhaka's story as a major city starts in the early 17th century. About 1610 the Mughal governor Islam Khan made it the provincial capital of Bengal and the city was, for a time, called Jahangirnagar after the emperor. The choice was practical: the site sat on the Buriganga river, close to the meeting of the delta's great rivers, and could be reached by boat from the rice-growing countryside and the cotton-weaving towns to the east. Under later governors, above all Shaista Khan, the city gained forts, caravanserais, mosques and a reputation for cheap rice and fine cloth.

The Mughal centre of power moved to Murshidabad in the early 18th century and Dhaka slowed down. British rule after 1765 brought new landowners and merchants, and a local family, the Nawabs of Dhaka, rose to lead the city's Muslim community. Nawab Abdul Ghani built the pink Ahsan Manzil palace on the river in the 1860s. In 1905 the partition of Bengal made Dhaka the capital of a new province for a few years, and in 1921 the University of Dhaka opened, setting up the academic quarter around Shahbag that still shapes the city centre.

In 1947 the British left India and Dhaka became the capital of East Bengal, later East Pakistan. The 1952 Language Movement, in which students and others demanding recognition of Bangla were shot at by police on 21 February, was the first great political turn. Bengali nationalism grew through the 1960s, and after the March 1971 crackdown and a nine-month war, Pakistani forces surrendered in Dhaka on 16 December 1971. Bangladesh's capital has been Dhaka ever since.

Since then the city has grown enormously. The garment industry and migration from rural areas have turned a town of a few hundred thousand in the 1950s into a region of tens of millions by common estimates. That growth explains most of what a visitor sees: the density, the traffic, the shortage of pavements and the way old and new layers sit next to each other. It also explains why so few places from the Mughal and Nawab eras survive in good condition: they were built for a small river town and have been surrounded, and sometimes built over, by a very large city.

For a first visit, treat the three eras as three outings. Lalbagh Fort and the Old Dhaka lanes are the Mughal and Nawab city. Shahbag, the National Museum and the Shaheed Minar are the 20th-century city of the university and the language movement. Gulshan and the north are the post-1971 city of embassies, hotels and offices. Trying to see all three in one day is the usual mistake, because traffic turns a short map distance into an hour or more.

Old Dhaka, called Puran Dhaka locally, is the part of the city that grew around the Buriganga river before the modern city spread north. It is a grid of narrow lanes, three- and four-storey shophouses, workshops and residential houses packed against each other, with shops on the ground floor and families above. Motorbikes, rickshaws and handcarts share the same lanes as pedestrians, and open drains run along the sides. On a first visit it is loud, close and slow, and most visitors are glad to have a guide.

Many of the neighbourhoods are named for the trade that once filled them. Shankhari Bazar is the lane of the shell-cutters, Hindu artisans who cut and polish conch shell into bangles. Tanti Bazar was the weavers' quarter. Chawkbazar is a large market with a mosque at its centre and a night market in Ramadan. Armanitola, a short distance north, takes its name from the Armenian merchants who lived there and left behind a small church built in 1781. The trades have thinned as factories and imports moved in, but the lane names and some workshops remain.

Religious and community life is part of the streetscape. The Star Mosque has a covering of star-shaped china tile patterns added in the early 20th century. Dhakeshwari Temple, the largest Hindu temple in the city, lies a little to the west near Lalbagh. Husseini Dalan, a 17th-century Shia hall, and many small mosques and temples share the lanes. Old Dhaka is also known for the rhythm of prayer times: shops pause at midday on Friday and roads empty for the congregation, and after sunset in Ramadan the lanes fill for iftar.

For a visitor, the practical rules matter more than the map. Go early, before the traffic and heat build, and go by ride-hail to the edge of a lane rather than into it. Leave big bags at the hotel: the lanes are too narrow and broken for suitcases. Hire a licensed guide for at least the first morning and agree the price and the route before you start. Carry small notes for rickshaws and snacks, and eat only food that is cooked in front of you.

You do not need to see everything. A good Old Dhaka morning is Ahsan Manzil at opening, the Star Mosque and Armenian Church in Armanitola, a sweet shop, and a biryani lunch by 13:00. That is already a full day for most people. Add the river at Sadarghat only with a guide, and treat it as a short look rather than a boat trip unless you have arranged one.

Dhaka's buildings run from Mughal to modern, and the best way to read them is by date. The oldest big monument in the city is Lalbagh Fort, begun in 1678 by Prince Muhammad Azam and left unfinished when the governor's daughter Pari Bibi died and was buried in a tomb inside. What survives is a mosque, the tomb of Pari Bibi, an audience hall used as a small museum, and lawns and walls. It is a quiet complex, best at opening, and a good first stop because it shows Mughal proportions without the crowds of larger forts elsewhere in South Asia.

The 19th century added the Nawab's palace. Ahsan Manzil was built by Nawab Abdul Ghani in 1859 to 1872, in the Indo-Saracenic style: a pink building with a domed central tower and a grand double staircase facing the Buriganga. A tornado in 1888 damaged it and it was rebuilt. It became a museum in the 1990s and shows rooms as the Nawab family used them. Curzon Hall, on the university campus, and the Armenian Church in Armanitola come from the same broad period of colonial and local building.

Religious buildings show the city's mix. The Star Mosque is small but famous for its surface of china tile stars. Dhakeshwari Temple is the main Hindu temple, rebuilt over the centuries and damaged in 1971. The National Mosque, Baitul Mukarram, is a large modern mosque in the commercial district of Paltan. These are worth seeing for what they show about Dhaka's communities, not for grand scale.

The building the wider world knows best is the National Parliament House in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, designed by the American architect Louis Kahn. It was designed in the early 1960s and finished in 1982, after Kahn's death. Its concrete and marble blocks with large circular and triangular openings are among the most admired modern buildings in South Asia. Access to the inside is controlled and the area is a government zone: ask your hotel or a guide whether visits are possible and treat photography with caution.

A short architecture day is easy to plan in three parts. The morning is Lalbagh Fort and Dhakeshwari Temple, which are close. Midday is a break at the hotel or a café in Dhanmondi. The late afternoon is the exterior of Curzon Hall and the university campus, or the National Museum for the air-conditioned galleries. Keep the Parliament as a separate outing, only if you can confirm access and the security situation on the day.

Dhaka eats rice and fish daily, but the food that visitors notice first is meat: biryani in Old Dhaka and kebab and roast in the north. The classic Old Dhaka dish is kacchi biryani, where raw marinated mutton, potato and rice are layered and cooked together in a sealed pot, so the meat steams in its own juices. It is served with borhani, a salty, sour, minty yoghurt drink that cuts the richness. Haji Biryani in Nazira Bazar is a well-known small place for this style; several chains, such as Fakruddin, serve it across the city.

Bread is the second local speciality. Bakarkhani is a layered, crisp flatbread from Old Dhaka, eaten with tea in the morning or with curry later in the day; one story ties the name to a Mughal-era noble, but treat that as folklore. Parathas, luchi and rutis fill breakfast plates. Tea in Dhaka is boiled with milk and sugar, and the stalls on every corner are the social heart of a street: sit on a stool, say 'kom chini' for less sugar, and watch the block go by.

Sweets are a proper meal in themselves. Bengali milk sweets such as sandesh, roshgolla, chomchom and mishti doi, a sweet set yoghurt, are sold by the piece in old shops and gift boxes. Old Dhaka has shops that have run for generations, such as Bhimnag in Shankhari Bazar, and buying a box is the usual way to say thank you to a host. Sweets keep for a day or two without fridge, which makes them good gifts to take on the road.

Fish matters more than any other single ingredient. Hilsa, called ilish, is the national fish and is cooked in mustard, steamed in banana leaf or fried; it is best in the monsoon. On Pohela Boishakh, the Bengali new year on 14 April, many families eat panta bhat (fermented rice) with fried hilsa. In the rainy months, bhuna khichuri, a spiced rice and lentil dish, is the traditional comfort dish. In winter, pitha, small sweet or savoury rice-flour cakes, appear at street stalls and in homes.

Street food is cheap and popular but carries a risk for visitors. Fuchka, chotpoti and jhalmuri are the well-known snacks: fuchka is a crisp shell filled with potato and tamarind water, chotpoti a plate of spiced chickpeas with egg, and jhalmuri a cone of spiced puffed rice. Eat only what is freshly cooked or assembled in front of you, choose busy stalls, and skip the tamarind water if your stomach is sensitive. Drink sealed bottled water, and expect chilli in almost everything: ask for 'jhal kom' if you want less.

Dhaka lives by moving on its river and its streets. The Buriganga, meaning Old Ganges, runs along the southern edge of the old city, and Sadarghat, the launch terminal, is where large passenger ferries leave for the south of the country, while small wooden boats cross the river all day. The water is heavily polluted, so it is a place to look at rather than touch. A short visit with a guide at dawn or dusk shows river life at its busiest: cargo boats, ferries, porters and tea stalls at the ghat.

On land, the cycle rickshaw is the city's signature vehicle. Dhaka is often called the rickshaw capital of the world, and estimates put the number in the hundreds of thousands. Many are hand-painted with film stars, animals, flowers and landscapes, a folk art that is now fading as more rickshaws are plain. Rickshaws are banned on many main roads, so they fill the lanes and back streets, while CNG autos, buses and cars use the arteries. The rule for visitors is simple: agree the fare before you get in, keep your bag in your lap, and do not use a rickshaw across busy junctions.

Traffic is the defining condition. Dhaka is one of the densest cities on earth, and its road space is small for its size. A 10 km ride can take 30 minutes on a Friday morning and two hours at a weekday peak. Rain makes it worse: streets flood and vehicles stop. The city has responded with new infrastructure: an elevated expressway from the airport, and the MRT Line 6, a north–south metro that opened in stages from 2022 and now links Uttara to Motijheel with stops at Shahbag and Dhaka University (check current service). For a visitor these help on specific routes but do not change the basic rule that every ride needs a long margin.

For planning, use the roads' quietest hours. Friday morning is the calmest time of the week; early morning before 08:00 is quiet on other days; the evening peak from 16:00 to 20:00 is the worst. Book a ride-hail car for the outing, tell the driver the return time if you plan to hire for the morning, and build a cushion into anything with a hard time, especially a flight. The airport is only about 15 to 20 km from the centre but should be given at least three hours on the day.

There are quieter ways to see the water. Some hotels arrange river cruises on private boats, and the lakes of Dhanmondi and Gulshan have promenades that are calm in the early morning. If you want to leave the city for a day, a car to Sonargaon takes you past canals and rice fields, and gives a very different sense of the delta. Whatever you choose, keep the day short and leave the last two hours free.

To understand modern Dhaka you need two dates: 21 February 1952 and 16 December 1971. The first is Language Martyrs' Day. In 1952 the government of Pakistan said that Urdu alone would be the national language, though most of the population in the east spoke Bangla. Students and others protested in Dhaka on 21 February; police opened fire near Dhaka Medical College and several people were killed. The event turned a language dispute into a wider movement for Bengali identity and rights.

Every year on 21 February, from just after midnight on 20 February, huge queues of people walk barefoot to the Central Shaheed Minar to lay flowers. Roads around Shahbag and the university are closed and the mood is quiet and serious. The date was proclaimed International Mother Language Day by UNESCO in 1999 and has been observed worldwide since 2000. For a visitor, it is a moving occasion, but it is not a day for sightseeing; if you go, dress modestly, go early or late, and follow local guidance.

The second date is 16 December 1971, Victory Day. After the March crackdown and nine months of war, in which very large numbers of people died and millions fled to India, Pakistani forces surrendered in Dhaka. The 1971 war shapes how the country talks about itself, and many museums and monuments treat it as the central story. The National Martyrs' Memorial in Savar, a tall memorial of folded triangular walls about 35 km from Dhaka, is the national monument to the dead, and the Liberation War Museum in Agargaon tells the story with documents, photographs and personal objects.

These places are worth a visit for anyone who wants to understand Bangladesh, but they need thought. The subject is painful and the museum is sober; take time and avoid taking photographs where signs forbid it. Political tensions in Dhaka are real: rallies, strikes and, in 2024, a major uprising have shaped the city's politics, and memorials can become gathering points. Check local news and your government's travel advice on the day.

A respectful half-day plan is simple. Start at the National Museum's Liberation War gallery for orientation, then visit the Central Shaheed Minar on the way back, and end with a quiet lunch. If you have another day, go to Savar or the Liberation War Museum. Speak quietly, ask before taking photos of people, and if a crowd or rally starts, leave and return to the hotel.