Fort and palace, Mymensingh
Shashi Lodgeশশী লজ
- Time needed
- About 45 minutes.
- best months
- Nov–Feb
The Muktagachha maharajas' palace in the heart of Mymensingh, rebuilt after the 1897 earthquake and known as the town's Rajbari.
At a glance
- Built
- 1905–1911, after the 1897 earthquake
- Built by
- Maharaja Shashikanta Acharya Chowdhury of Muktagachha
- Grounds
- About 3.6 hectares (9 acres)
- Today
- Department of Archaeology, to become a museum (since 2015)
About
The zamindars of Muktagachha were the richest family in the district, and late in the 1800s Maharaja Suryakanta Acharya Chowdhury built a two-storey mansion on nine acres near the Brahmaputra, naming it after his adopted son Shashikanta. The great earthquake of 12 June 1897 wrecked it. In 1905 Shashikanta, now the ninth maharaja, rebuilt Shashi Lodge to a new design on the same spot and finished furnishing it in 1911.
When the zamindari system was abolished after 1950 the palace passed to the government, and from 1952 it was a training college for women teachers. The building has since been left to age, and in 2015 the Department of Archaeology took it over to turn into a museum. A Venus statue more than two hundred years old that stood at the lodge was broken in August 2024 and its head taken away.
You come in through the front gate to the palace and its garden in the middle of town, a few minutes from the river and from the family's other house, Alexandra Castle.
Getting there: In the town centre near the Brahmaputra; any rickshaw knows it as Shashi Lodge.
Things to do
- Walk through the front gate into the garden and look at the palace front.
- Walk on to [Alexandra Castle](place:Q1429976-alexandra-castle), the same family's garden house a few minutes away.
Good to know
- Ask at the gate which rooms are open; the building is being turned into a museum.
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