Darul Aman Palace

The Darul Aman Palace stands on a low rise on the south-western edge of Kabul, at the end of a long avenue. Dar al-aman means “abode of peace”. It was built in the 1920s for King Amanullah Khan, who had led Afghanistan to full independence in 1919 and wanted a new, modern capital district, with ministries, a parliament and a railway to the old city, to show a modern state to the world.

The palace was designed in a European neoclassical style, a long symmetrical block of pale stone, several storeys high, with a domed central pavilion and corner towers, quite unlike any earlier building in Kabul. Amanullah's reforms provoked an uprising, and in January 1929 he abdicated and left the country before his new capital was finished. The palace was later used for government offices, and for a time it housed the ministry of defence.

Over the following decades it was gutted by fire more than once, and in the fighting of the 1990s it was shelled until only a scarred shell remained, an image of the city's destruction that became familiar around the world. In 2016 restoration began, and most of the work was completed for the centenary of Afghan independence on 19 August 2019. The restored building, its pale walls and dome once more intact, now stands as a symbol of the long hopes of modern Afghanistan, and of the city's capacity to rebuild. Across the road from the palace stands the National Museum of Afghanistan.