Downtown Yangon — the area between Strand Road and Anawratha Street, roughly from the Sule Pagoda east to Botahtaung — contains one of the largest intact collections of British colonial architecture in Asia. The grid of streets laid out in the 1850s after the British annexed Lower Burma is still legible, and most of the early 20th-century commercial buildings survive, albeit in varying states of decay.
Walking the downtown grid is one of Yangon's great pleasures. No single sight dominates — the experience is cumulative, street by street, building by building. The contrast between the grand colonial facades and the chaotic street-level commerce happening underneath them is vivid. Worth at least a full morning of wandering.