Darul Aman Palace

A neo-classical three-storey palace on a hilltop south-west of central Kabul, built by King Amanullah in the 1920s as the capital of a modernising Afghan state that never quite materialised. The hill commands the southern approaches to the city and the palace was both showpiece and symbol — gardens, fountains, the planned parliament across the road that became the National Museum.

The building was wrecked by the war of the 1990s and stood as a roofless shell for two decades. It was extensively reconstructed in the late 2010s and now houses government offices, though access is restricted. Even from outside, it is the single most photographed building in Kabul, partly because of the architecture and partly because of what it has come to mean.

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A story
King Amanullah commissioned the palace in the 1920s as the centrepiece of a new European-style capital — wide boulevards, electric trams, a parliament — that he hoped would drag Afghanistan into the twentieth century in a generation. His reforms triggered a tribal revolt that drove him into exile in 1929. The palace, never properly used, was bombed in the 1990s, gutted by fire, and stood as a ruin for twenty years.

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