Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Narayanhiti Palace Kathmandu


The Narayanhity Palace Museum is a palace in Nepal which long served as a primary residence for the country's monarchs. The original palace was constructed under order of the Shah dynasty in the 18th century and destroyed in an earthquake in 1934. It was rebuilt in a contemporary style in the 1960s on the design of Architect Benjamin Polk(Chatterjee & Polk). On 1 June 2001, the palace was the site of the Nepalese royal massacre, where King Birendra of Nepal and Queen Aiswarya were shot dead along with seven other members of the Royal Family.

The historical palace was turned into a public museum immediately after the country was declared a republic. It is open to national and international visitors on weekdays.

Every day, hundreds of foreign and Nepalese visitors arrive here to look into the last couple of decades of Nepal's troubled history, with its royal intrigue, family bloodshed and its isolated and deeply unpopular monarch who didn't realize until things were beyond his control that history wasn't with him anymore.

Inside, tourists wander through room after room of vinyl furniture, gold carpets and decades-old silver-framed photographs (the Shah of Iran, Bobby Kennedy, various popes). The palace, a pink concrete hulk built in the late 1960s, stretches across 52 rooms and nearly 41,000 square feet.

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