Panam Nagar

Panam Nagar is one street, several hundred metres long, lined on both sides with the mansions of Hindu cloth merchants who grew rich on the muslin trade and built here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The houses mix Mughal, colonial and local motifs, with columns, plaster mouldings, coloured glass and decorated parapets, and after their owners left the buildings were abandoned to the weather. Fig roots have taken several facades, plaster has fallen away to expose brick, and the whole street stands in an eerie state of arrested decay. It sits within the wider Sonargaon area, a medieval capital of the region, where a folk art museum occupies a restored palace nearby.

What you actually see

• The street of mansions - the full row of decaying merchant houses on both sides.
• Facade detail - plasterwork, coloured glass and mixed Mughal and colonial motifs.
• Sonargaon folk art museum - regional crafts in a restored palace nearby.
• The surrounding tanks and bridges - remains of the older medieval capital.

When to go

November to February for cool dry weather and better light. It works as a half-day trip from Dhaka, though traffic out of the city can consume much of the morning.

Honest expectations

The buildings are genuinely unsafe and most are fenced or barred, so this is a walk down a street rather than an explore. Conservation has been slow and several houses have partly collapsed. Getting there from Dhaka takes far longer than the distance suggests because of traffic, so start early.

Nearby

Sonargaon's museum is adjacent; Dhaka's old city is an hour or more back to the northwest.