Zia Memorial Museum (জিয়া স্মৃতি জাদুঘর)

Zia Memorial Museum is a museum in the Old Circuit House on Shahid Saifuddin Khaled Road, Kazir Dewri, in central Chattogram, Bangladesh, where President Ziaur Rahman was killed in 1981. It has been closed since 2 December 2025 after earthquake damage, so it suits visitors who want to see the colonial building from outside and follow its history.

Circuit house, radio station and army post

The British authorities finished the two-storey circuit house in 1913 as a residence for visiting government officials. On 5 June 1954 Radio Pakistan's new Chittagong station began broadcasting from it. During the Liberation War of 1971 the Pakistan Army used it as a base and turned rooms into torture cells. On 17 December 1971, after the Pakistani surrender, Rafiqul Islam lowered the Pakistani flag here and raised the flag of Bangladesh.

The night of 30 May 1981

President Ziaur Rahman, the seventh president of Bangladesh, stayed at the circuit house in late May 1981 to settle a dispute in his party. On the night of 30 May army officers led by Colonel Matiur Rahman attacked, and he was shot dead inside. Four days later the government of Abdus Sattar approved a plan to make the building a museum, which opened on 6 September 1993.

Seventeen galleries and the bullet-marked room

The museum belongs to the Bangladesh National Museum and presents Ziaur Rahman's life in 17 galleries. It keeps the room where he was killed, including a wall marked by bullets, along with his personal belongings, the stretcher that carried his body and a replica of his mausoleum. It also holds the microphone used by M. A. Hannan and Zia to broadcast the declaration of independence from the Kalurghat radio centre in 1971. Before the closure it drew at least 150 visitors a day.

The museum's name has been politically contested. In 2019 a proposal to rename it the Liberation War Memorial Museum was followed by activists removing Zia's name from the signboard, and later plans to move the museum stalled.