“Old Dhaka” is Dhaka’s historic district. It might not seem like much now, but at one point, Dhaka was one of the largest and most prosperous cities on the Indian Subcontinent. From the late 1700s to the early 1900s, Dacca (as it was spelled back then) was the jewel of the British Empire. The East India Trading Company would gain complete control of the city in the late 1700s, but political unrest would see them ceed control to the British Crown in the mid 1800s. 

Dacca was soon eclipsed by British Calcutta (now Kolkata) as the largest and most important city on the Indian Subcontinent, and eventually earned itself a new name: “The City of Magnificent Ruins.”

That name is still pretty applicable to this day, but there was a time when Dhaka was (supposedly) pretty gorgeous. To the right a painting of British Dacca in the mid-1800s. As is true in Calcutta, the British poured resources into this city, in order to build up the wealth of their empire. No Bangladeshis saw much benefit from this of course.

Fast forward a couple hundred years, and Dhaka has a been gifted with a new title: "the most unlivable city in the world."

Clearly colonialism didn't work out very well for Bangladesh. Or for any former colonies. And they've had a few other bumps in the road as well, which we'll talk about in another article. For now though, we'll talk about Old Dhaka as it is today. 

To be honest, I wasn't particularly taken with Old Dhaka. It didn’t have much to offer that the rest of the city didn’t besides some big stone walls that encircled the area. It was interesting, but too chaotic to really stop to consider the history behind it for very long. I’ll admit that I’m a bit salty about my visit there because it took us more than 3 hours to get there from the northern side of the city. By the time we got there, our mojo was gone. We walked through, got some Kebab, and left. Maybe one day I'll return to do Old Dhaka better justice. 

Here are some of my limited pictures from Old Dhaka...