The Maha Bandula Park or Maha Bandula Garden ( my, မဟာဗန္ဓုလ ပန်းခြံ, , also spelt Mahabandula or Mahabandoola) is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

park, located in downtown

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. The park is bounded by Maha Bandula Garden Street in the east,

Sule Pagoda Road Sule Pagoda Road ( my, ဆူးလေဘုရားလမ်း) is a major thoroughfare of Yangon, Burma. It runs past Maha Bandula Park The Maha Bandula Park or Maha Bandula Garden ( my, မဟာဗန္ဓုလ ပန်းခြံ, , ...

in the west, Konthe Road in the south and

Maha Bandula Road Maha Bandula Road ( my, မဟာဗန္ဓုလလမ်း, formerly Dalhousie Road) is a major road of southern Yangon, Burma. It is named in honored of The great King Maha Bandula . It crosses the city in a west–east direction and runs p ...

in the north, and is surrounded by some of the important buildings in the area such as the

Sule Pagoda The Sule Pagoda ( my, ဆူးလေဘုရား; ) is a Burmese Buddhist stupa located in the heart of downtown Yangon, occupying the centre of the city and an important space in contemporary Burmese politics, ideology and geography. Accord ...

, the

Yangon City Hall Yangon City Hall ( my, ရန်ကုန်မြို့တော်ခန်းမ; YCH) is the city hall of Yangon, the largest city of Myanmar, and the seat of the city's administrative body, Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC). The bu ...

and the High Court. The park is named after General Maha Bandula who fought against the British in the

First Anglo-Burmese War The First Anglo-Burmese War ( my, ပထမ အင်္ဂလိပ်-မြန်မာ စစ်; ; 5 March 1824 – 24 February 1826), also known as the First Burma War, was the first of three wars fought between the British and Burmese ...

(1824–1826).

History

The park dates to 1867 to 1868, founded as Fytche Square in honour of the then

Chief Commissioner A chief commissioner is a commissioner of a high rank, usually in chief of several commissioners or similarly styled officers. Colonial In British India the gubernatorial style was chief commissioner in various (not all) provinces (often after be ...

British Burma British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Albert Fytche Lieutenant-General Albert Fytche CSI (21 September 1820 – 16 June 1892) was a British Indian Army officer who served as Chief Commissioner of the British Crown Colony of Burma from February 1867 to April 1871. Educated at Rugby School and com ...

. The site was previously a vacant, swampy site originally known as Tank Square, which was cleared and laid out as a public recreation ground. A white marble statue of

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...

was placed in the center of the park in 1896, gifted by a wealthy Armenian firm in Rangoon. After 1935, the park was renamed Bandula Square, reflecting rising nationalist sentiment. After 1948, the Independence Monument, an

obelisk An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by Anc ...

in commemoration of Burmese independence from the British in 1948, was installed at the center of the park, replacing the statue of Queen Victoria.The statue of Queen Victoria was brought back to England after Myanmar Independence. The architect of this Independence Monument Sithu U Tin who is the same architect for City Hall. The park was remodelled in 2012.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in Yangon Parks in Myanmar Tourist attractions in Yangon