Mandalay Mya Nan San Kyaw Royal Palace is a major tourist attraction in Mandalay. Mandalay is the second largest city in Myanmar which is easily reachable by air,rail and bus. Revealing the glory of last Myanmar Dynasty, it has become a crowd-favourite for both locals and international visitors.

Mandalay Royal Palace is the last official residence of the two very last monarchs of Myanmar, King Mindon and King Thibaw. The old Palace was constructed in February 1857 and was fully completed in May 1859. A 413-hectare palace compound is surrounded by four 2-kilometre-long magnificent walls. A rectangular moat appears before each wall. The moat has 64 metres width and 4.5 metres depth. The palace grounds are massive, pretty clean with well-laid lawns. lion throne, the great audience halls, relic tower, court building, clock tower and watch tower are rather impressive. All the buildings throughout the compound are one storey in height. The number of spires on the roofs of the buildings indicates the significance of them.

Sad to say, Allied bombing in World War II made a great damage to old Royal Palace and only the watch tower and the royal mint survived. As a result, a replica of the Royal Palace had to be reconstructed in the 1990s. Although the original palace was constructed with only teak, concrete and corrugated sheet metal in roofing were put in the new palace due to modern techniques. However, the modern construction materials were not apparent enough to believe that you are in the replica of the old palace because of its faithful overall design of the original royal residence.

At the entrance of the Palace, you would see military guards and you might feel like you are actually visiting a royal palace. The eastern entrance is available for the tourists to enter and it may take about 20-30 minutes to get to the Palace grounds from the entrance if you walk along. The entrance fees ticket can also be used as a validation in visiting other Mandalay destinations such as Golden Palace Monastery, Mandalay Hill, Kuthodaw Temple, etc. Therefore, please keep the ticket for further uses.

It is said that a trip to Mandalay is not completed without visiting Mandalay Royal Palace. From the top of Mandalay Hill, you can enjoy radiant sunrise and sunset as well as a fantastic geometrical layout of the Palace along with the moat. Modern Mandalay has won a Smart City Award from the Asian-oceanian Computing Industry Organization in 2019. In short, please don’t lose a chance to visit Mandalay Mya Nan San Kyaw Royal Palace, an admirable heritage of Myanmar.

Written by
Rose Nyein Chan