Historical Sites of Rajshahi

Choto Sona Mosque and the ruins of Gaur

Choto Sona Mosque — the Small Golden Mosque — was built around 1493–1519 under Alauddin Husain Shah, and it is the best preserved sultanate mosque in Bangladesh. The walls are dressed stone rather than brick, carved edge to edge with rosettes, hanging-lamp motifs and creeper bands, and the fifteen domes over the prayer hall include a rare row of chau-chala vaults imitating the curve of a thatched Bengali roof. The gilding that gave it its name is long gone.

It stands in Shibganj upazila of Chapai Nawabganj, inside what was once Gaur, capital of Bengal for most of the 14th to 16th centuries. Partition split the city: the citadel and its most famous gateways ended up in Malda in India, and this side of the line kept Choto Sona, Darasbari, the Tohakhana complex and Shah Niamatullah’s tomb and mosque.

Darasbari Mosque, a couple of kilometres on, is the counterweight — built in 1479, roofless now, its arcades open to the sky and its stone mihrabs still carrying deep relief carving. It is one of the largest sultanate mosques in the country and one of the least visited.

Kusumba Mosque, Naogaon

Kusumba Mosque was completed in 1558, during the brief Suri interlude between the Sur and Karrani dynasties, and it is the most complete stone building of its period in Bangladesh. A rectangular hall under six domes sits on a raised platform beside a large tank, faced inside and out in grey-black basalt, with mihrabs cut in relief so crisp that individual lotus petals still read after four and a half centuries.

One of its mihrabs sits on a raised stone platform reached by steps — an unusual arrangement thought to have served as a royal or governor’s enclosure. The mosque appears on the Bangladeshi five taka note, which is how most visitors recognise it before they arrive.

Puthia: the temple town

Thirty kilometres east of Rajshahi city, Puthia holds the densest concentration of historic Hindu temples in Bangladesh, built by the Puthia zamindar family between the 16th and 19th centuries around a pair of ponds and a palace. The Bara Ahnik Mandir, Govinda Temple, Gopala Temple, Dol Mancha and the great Bhubaneshwar Shiva Temple all stand within walking distance of each other.

The Shiva temple is the largest of its type in the country, a five-spired pancharatna structure on a high plinth. The Govinda Temple is the one to linger at: every exposed surface of its walls carries terracotta panels of scenes from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Krishna legends, worked at a scale that rewards a slow circuit.

The Puthia Rajbari itself — a European-fronted palace of 1895 — closes the square. It houses a college now, but the facade and the forecourt are freely visitable.

Natore, Uttara Gano Bhaban and Bagha

The Dighapatia Rajbari at Natore was built by a zamindar family in the 18th century, rebuilt after the 1897 earthquake, and taken over by the state in 1972 as Uttara Gano Bhaban — the northern residence of the head of government. Its Italianate front, marble hall and formal gardens are open to visitors when no official function is in progress. Natore Rajbari, seat of the Rani Bhabani estate, sits a few kilometres away with its own cluster of temples and ponds.

South of Puthia at Bagha, the mosque of 1523 is worth the detour for its terracotta alone — the entire brick surface is covered in floral and geometric panels, and the surrounding tank and graveyard make it the most photogenic stop on the route.

• Rajshahi city to Puthia: 30 km, about 45 minutes
• Rajshahi to Natore: 40 km, roughly an hour
• Rajshahi to Kusumba Mosque: about 2 hours via Naogaon
• Rajshahi to Choto Sona and Darasbari: 40 km to Shibganj, about 1.5 hours