Panam Nagar (Panam City), Sonargaon

Panam Nagar is a 600 m street of 19th- and early 20th-century merchant houses in Sonargaon, Narayanganj District, about 27 km south-east of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Department of Archaeology protects it, the houses are seen from the street, and it makes a half-day trip from Dhaka together with Sonargaon's folk art museum.

Panam Nagar lies in Sonargaon Upazila of Narayanganj District, southeast of Dhaka. Sonargaon was the seat of Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, who declared himself an independent sultan in 1338, and later a capital of the Bengal Sultanate. Its hinterland was the centre of Bengal's muslin trade. Panam was part of this capital region from the late 13th century.

Sonargaon declined after the Mughal capital moved to Dhaka in the 17th century. In the 19th century wealthy Hindu merchants and landholders settled in Panam, renovated older abandoned buildings and added new houses; Kashinath House is dated 1898 and another building 1928. Many upper-class families left for Calcutta around 1947, and after the riots of 1964 and the war of 1965 most remaining Hindu residents migrated to India, and the houses were declared enemy property. The Department of Archaeology declared the street protected in 2003, and in 2006 the World Monuments Fund listed it among the 100 most endangered sites.

The street is about 600 metres long and 5 metres wide, with 31 buildings on the north side and 21 on the south. Their facades show three styles: Mughal, British colonial and a hybrid of the two. The Mughal features include cusped mouldings, ogee-shaped windows and niches with pointed arches, and many houses combine them with European colonial facades.

Canals run along both sides of the settlement, the northern one known as the Pankhiraj Canal, and once helped protect the quarter and carry goods by boat. Several houses are in poor condition, and visitors view them from the street. The Folk Art and Crafts Foundation museum, set up by the painter Zainul Abedin in 1975, and the Goaldi Mosque, built under Sultan Alauddin Husain Shah, are both a short drive away.

Entry is by a ticket bought at the gate, with a higher rate for foreign visitors, and the site closes on certain days set by the Department of Archaeology. Fridays and public holidays bring large local crowds, so a weekday morning is the calmest time. The walk along the street takes about an hour; allow a full half-day to include the folk art museum, and avoid the rush-hour traffic on the Dhaka to Chittagong highway.

Opening hours run from 9:00 to 17:00. The site closes on Sundays and government holidays and opens only in the afternoon on Mondays, from 14:00. Buses on the Dhaka–Chittagong highway stop at Mograpara crossing, 3 km away, where CNG auto-rickshaws and rickshaws cover the last stretch, and drivers can park near the entrance. The street is flat and easy to walk, and the cool, dry months from November to February are the most comfortable.

Ticketing at Panam Nagar began around 2017; a 2018 report gave the fee as Tk 20 for Bangladeshi visitors and Tk 100 for foreigners, and noted that the doors of the old houses had been boarded up. The Sonargaon Folk Arts Museum is about ten minutes away by rickshaw, and the lake at Sardar Bari in its grounds has paddle boats. Buses leave for Sonargaon from Gulistan in Dhaka. Setting out by 7:00 on weekdays avoids the worst highway traffic, and heading back around 15:00 beats the evening rush.