The Mandalay Palace (pronounced [máɴdəlé náɴdɔ̀]), located in Mandalay, Myanmar, is the last royal palace of the last Burmese monarchy. The palace was constructed, between 1857 and 1859 as part of King Mindon's founding of new royal capital city of Mandalay. The plan of Mandalay Palace largely follows the traditional Burmese palace design, inside a walled fort surrounded by a moat. The palace itself is at the centre of the citadel and faces east. All buildings of the palace are of one storey in height. The number of spires above a building indicated the importance of the area below.
The Mandalay Palace was the primary royal residence of King Mindon and King Thibaw, the last two kings of the country. The palace ceased being on 28 November 1885 when the British entered the palace and captured the royal family, officially ending the Third Anglo-Burmese War. The British looted the palace, and turned the palace compound into Fort Dufferin. Throughout the British colonial era, the palace was seen by the Burmese as the primary symbol sovereignty and identity. Much of the palace compound was burned down during World War II by allied bombing; only the royal mint and the watch tower survived. A replica of the palace was rebuilt in the 1990s with some modern materials.
Today, the Mandalay Palace is a primary symbol of Mandalay and a major tourist destination.
Photograph of the Nandaw (Royal Palace) at Mandalay in Burma (Myanmar), from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections: Burma Circle, 1903-07.
History
The Mandalay Palace was constructed as part of King Mindon's founding of Mandalay in February 1857. The master plan called for a 144-square block grid patterned city, anchored by a 16 square block royal palace compound at the centre by Mandalay Hill. The 413-hectare royal palace compound was surrounded by four 2 km (6666 ft) long walls and a moat 64 m (210 ft) wide, 4.5 m (15 ft) deep. Along the wall were bastions with gold-tipped spires at intervals of 169 m (555 ft). The walls had three gates on each side, twelve in total, each presenting a zodiac sign. The citadel had five bridges to cross the moat.
In June 1857, the construction of the palace began. After the disastrous Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, the shrunken Burmese kingdom had few resources to build a new ostentatious palace. The former royal palace of Amarapura was dismantled and moved by elephants to the new location at the foot of Mandalay Hill. The construction of the palace compound was officially completed on Monday, 23 May 1859.
The British looted the palace in 1887 (see above illustration) and some of the artefacts which were taken away are still on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and burned down the royal library. The British renamed the palace compound Fort Dufferin and used it to billet troops. During World War II, the palace citadel was turned into a supply depot by the Japanese and was burnt to the ground by Allied bombing. Only the royal mint and the watch tower survived.
A replica of the palace was built in the 1990s. While the overall design was faithful, the materials such as corrugated sheet metal for roofing were not.
One of the halls was dismantled during the rule of King Thibaw and rebuilt as Shwenandaw Monastery. It is the single remaining major structure of the original wooden palace today.
The Glass Palace
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Left: The Glass Palace in 1903. Right: Design of the Glass Palace
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Hmannandawgyi or Glass Palace, is the largest and considered one of the most beautiful apartments of the Palace. It is believed to be King Mindon's principal living apartment of the palace. Like all the Throne rooms, it is divided by a wooden partition into two rooms.
In the east room is the Bee Throne (Bhamarasana), so called because it was adorned with figures of bees in the small niches at the bottom of the pedestal. This was where the ceremony for the nomination of the Chief Queen and the Royal nuptial were held. It was also where the king and queen celebrated the Burmese New Year, and where the formal ear piercing of young princesses took place. The body of King Mindon was laid out in this room for viewing after his death in 1878.
The west room, which was formerly divided into several smaller ones, was the principal living room of Mindon, and no other persons were allowed to sleep there except the four principal queens, to each of whom was appointed a room near the royal bed-chamber, which consisted of a small room surmounted by a pyatthat, or small spire consisting of seven superposed roofs similar to the Golden Spire over the Lion Throne Room on the cast of the Palace. This pyatthat was of gilt copper. On each side of this spired-room were constantly kept open two white umbrellas. The ladies-in-waiting of the Glass Palace were, by turns, stationed around the west room to wait upon. Their Majesties; they, whether princesses or minor queens, were not allowed to enter this room with slippers on or with their golden umbrellas: they had to leave these at the entrance with their attendants.
Photograph of the Lion Throne in the Royal Palace at Mandalay, probably taken by Felice Beato in c.1890. Mandalay, the second largest city in Burma, was founded in 1857 by King Mindon Min (who shifted his capital here from Amarapura) and became the country's last great royal capital. Thibaw was the last king of Burma and ruled from 1878 until 1885, when Mandalay was annexed by the British Empire and he was exiled to south India together with his queen Supayalat. His throne dominated the Great Audience Hall and was one of eight in the palace. It is a magnificent gilded wooden structure topped with a pediment decorated with flaring ornamental forms known as saing-baung, derived from the haunches of a wild ox. It is decorated with floral designs, glass mosaic work and carved imagery including divine beings, astrological symbols, and lions, from which the throne takes its name. The imagery was designed to express the universality of the monarch and links the throne to the heavenly realm of Thagyamin, the king of the gods, and Mount Meru, the sacred mountain at the centre of the world in Burmese Buddhist cosmology. It dates from 1857-61 and is now in the National Museum at Rangoon (Yangon). The photograph is from an album devoted almost entirely to Lord Elgin's Burma tour of November to December 1898. Victor Alexander Bruce (1849-1917), ninth Earl of Elgin and 13th Earl of Kincardine, served as Viceroy of India between 1894 and 1899.
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