Myanmar's cultural capital — Mandalay Hill at sunrise, mohinga fish noodle soup at the street stalls, and the gilded U Bein teak bridge at golden hour
Mandalay is the cultural and spiritual capital of Myanmar (Burma) — a landlocked city on the Irrawaddy River that was the last capital of the Burmese royal kingdom before the British annexation in 1885, and that still holds the highest concentration of monasteries, pagodas, jade carvers, gold-leaf beaters, and traditional Burmese craftspeople of any city in Southeast Asia. The area around Mandalay encompasses four Ancient Cities of great historical importance within a 25 km radius: Mandalay itself, Inwa (Ava), Sagaing (the city of 1,000 pagodas on a forested ridge), and Amarapura (where the U…
Mandalay was founded in 1857 by King Mindon Min — a deliberate act of dynastic legitimisation timed to coincide with a Buddhist prophecy that a great city would be built at the foot of Mandalay Hill at the 2,400th anniversary of the Buddha's teachings. King Mindon built the Mandalay Palace (a teak palace complex enclosed within a moated square wall, each side 2 km long) and moved the capital from Amarapura. His successor Thibaw Min was the last Burmese king — the British Third Anglo-Burmese War of November 1885 was over in two weeks, Thibaw was exiled to India, and Burma became a British Indi…