Architectural Guide Yangon presents around one hundred memorable
buildings from Myanmar’s historical capital. Following decades of
international isolation, the city’s vast heritage remains largely,
surprisingly and spectacularly intact. Rangoon – as it was known under
the British – was a melting pot of British India. Vivid traces of this
legacy are everywhere, especially in the city’s Buddhist, Christian,
Hindu, Jewish and Muslim houses of worship that often stand side by
side, down town, in Yangon’s tightly-gridded streets. Since the
country’s independence from the British in 1948, successive
authoritarian regimes have also stamped the cityscape with their
legacies. Today Yangon is a bustling and busy city in flux, at the
frontier of Myanmar’s rapid opening to the wider world. Yangon’s urban
fabric deserves a systematic guide that nourishes every visitor and
resident’s shared fascination for the city and its history, offering
countless anecdotes and notes on architectural detail.
