Dhaka

Dhaka grew where the Buriganga gave access to the whole delta. Settlements existed here under the Bengal sultans, but the decisive moment came in 1610, when the Mughals made it the provincial capital of Bengal and renamed it Jahangirnagar. For about a century it was one of the richest cities of the empire, exporting the fine cotton muslin woven in the villages around it and trading with Armenian, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English merchants. Lalbagh Fort was begun in 1678 and never finished, and the tomb inside it holds the daughter of the governor Shaista Khan.

When the Mughal capital of Bengal moved to Murshidabad early in the 18th century, Dhaka declined sharply, and the collapse of the muslin trade under British rule left it a provincial town. Two things revived it: the wealth and public works of the Nawab family at Ahsan Manzil, and the short-lived province of Eastern Bengal and Assam between 1905 and 1911, which briefly made Dhaka a capital again and left Curzon Hall behind. The University of Dhaka opened in 1921.

After partition in 1947 Dhaka became the capital of East Pakistan, and its streets carried the defining events of the national story: the shooting of students demanding recognition of Bengali on 21 February 1952, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's speech at the Racecourse on 7 March 1971, the army crackdown of 25 March, and the Pakistani surrender on the same ground on 16 December. Since independence the city has grown enormously, pulled by government, trade and the garment industry, and in July and August 2024 it was the centre of the student-led uprising that ended Sheikh Hasina's government. An interim government under Muhammad Yunus followed, and after the 2026 general election the Bangladesh Nationalist Party returned to power.

Old Dhaka has an identity of its own within the capital. Its long-settled families speak Dhakaiya, a local form of Bengali carrying Urdu words, and are known for their banter, their neighbourhood loyalties and above all their food. In January the rooftops fill with kite-flyers for Shakrain at the end of the month of Poush; in Ramadan the lanes around Chawk Bazaar turn into an evening market of iftar dishes; and the Hindu street of Shankhari Bazar still has conch-shell workers and keeps Durga Puja around the Dhakeshwari temple.

The newer city is a capital of publishing, theatre, music and argument. The Bangla Academy's Ekushey Book Fair fills February, the month in which crowds walk barefoot to the Shaheed Minar to remember the language martyrs — a day UNESCO adopted as International Mother Language Day. Pahela Baishakh in April opens with the singers of Chhayanaut under a banyan tree in Ramna Park and a large procession of masks and papier-mâché animals from the university's fine arts faculty. Shahbagh, the junction between the university, the museum and the hospital, is where the city gathers to protest.

Cricket is followed intensely, and a Bangladesh match empties the streets and fills the tea stalls. Rickshaw art — painted panels of film stars, flowers and landscapes on the backs of cycle-rickshaws — is a recognised folk craft of the city and has been listed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. Manners are warm and formal: elders are addressed with respect, guests are fed generously, and dress in public is modest by habit rather than rule.

Around ten million people live within the city's two corporations and more than twenty million in the wider metropolitan area, which makes central Dhaka one of the most densely populated places in the world. Growth is fed by migration from the countryside, much of it into the garment belts of Gazipur, Savar and Narayanganj around the edges, where hundreds of thousands of workers, mostly women, fill the roads at shift changes. Government, banking, universities, hospitals and a large technology and outsourcing sector are concentrated in the city itself.

The day is organised around traffic. People leave early, work long hours, eat lunch at their desks or from a roadside stall, and reach home late; a journey of a few kilometres can take an hour. The metro and the elevated expressway have shortened some routes, but congestion, monsoon flooding, winter air pollution among the worst measured anywhere, a shortage of affordable housing and the polluted water of the Buriganga remain the city's daily problems.

Neighbourhood life is strong all the same. Tea stalls serve as meeting points, small shops stay open late, and each mahalla has its mosque, market and cricket pitch of sorts. The wealthy live in Gulshan, Baridhara and Dhanmondi; the middle class in Mirpur, Uttara and Mohammadpur; and much of the workforce in dense low-rise settlements between them. At the two Eids the city empties as millions travel home to their villages, and for a few days its streets are quiet enough to walk.

Old Dhaka is the country's most famous kitchen, and biryani is its emblem. Kacchi biryani — raw marinated mutton layered under rice with potato and cooked slowly in a sealed pot — is the dish of weddings and celebrations, served with borhani, a thin, salty spiced yoghurt drink with mint. Alongside it come morog polao, a chicken pilaf, and tehari, a yellow rice dish with cubes of beef. Bakarkhani, a thick, dry, layered flatbread from the Mughal kitchen, is eaten with morning tea, and grilled kebabs and chaap are sold from pavement griddles after dark.

The everyday food is delta food: rice, dal, vegetable bhaji and fish curry, with hilsa the most prized fish of all, and a plate of bhorta — mashes of aubergine, potato, dried fish or lentils with mustard oil, chilli and onion — accompanying almost any meal. Khichuri, rice and lentils cooked together, is what Dhaka eats when it rains. In winter, roadside stalls sell pitha, rice cakes steamed with date-palm jaggery and coconut.

Ramadan reshapes the food year: the Chawkbazar market sells haleem, jilapi, fried snacks and a famous mixed platter, and families break the fast with dates, chickpeas and puffed rice. Sweets are taken seriously — roshogolla, chomchom, sandesh and mishti doi, the sweetened yoghurt set in clay pots. Tea comes milky and sweet from stalls on every corner, and the northern districts add coffee shops and the widest choice of foreign cooking in Bangladesh.