Riverside zamindari grandeur — Mughal-era palace ruins, the Old Brahmaputra, and Bangladesh's most romantic colonial town
Mymensingh is a university and river city on the Old Brahmaputra's eastern bank, one of Bangladesh's most historically layered towns and considerably less visited than its character deserves. The city's zamindari heritage is visible in crumbling 19th-century palace complexes — the Gauripur Palace, the Muktagacha Zamindar Bari, the Shashi Lodge — built by Bengali landlord families during the British colonial period when Mymensingh district was one of the wealthiest in Bengal. The old town has a beautiful riverside area with decaying colonial bungalows shaded by enormous rain trees, and the Mym…
Mymensingh was the capital of the administrative district of the same name under British Bengal — one of the most populous and agriculturally productive districts in India, known for its zamindari (landlord) system and the extraordinary wealth accumulated by the Hindu zamindars under the British land revenue settlement. The area has a strong connection to Bengali literature and music — the poet Manik Bandyopadhyay was from the region, and Mymensingh Geetika, a collection of Bengali folk ballads collected by Dinesh Chandra Sen in the early 20th century, documented a rich oral literary traditio…