Dr. Roland Silva Memorial Lecture: By Uditha Devapriya On Thursday, 27 January, Prof. Romila Thapar will deliver the Dr Roland Silva Memorial Lecture to the National Trust of Sri Lanka. Prof. Thapar will be speaking about the museums in India, charting their evolution from private collections to public displays and placing them in the context […]
In with the old
Yangon has more of them than any other city in South-East Asia
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INCE MYANMAR began to reverse decades of isolationism in 2011, it has embraced modernity with a zeal befitting a country deprived of it for so long. Students tap smartphones, food-delivery jockeys zip down the streets and cash machines are everywhere. But while the people of Yangon, the country’s biggest city and commercial capital, are rushing into the present, much of the urban fabric remains firmly in the past. Most buildings in the city centre were built in the colonial era, when Rangoon, as the city was then known, was the biggest commercial hub of the British empire between Singapore and Calcutta (as it was). Indian merchants, Armenian hoteliers, Filipino barbers and Saudi tobacco-dealers set up shop or took up residence in stately Victorian, Edwardian and Art Deco buildings.