Chittagong keeps its past in layers: Mughal mosques on captured fort hills, a Portuguese pirate quarter above the Karnaphuli, Burma-campaign war graves, and the ridges where Surya Sen's students took on the British in 1930.
Built in 1667 on the fort hill the Mughals seized from the Arakanese, this thick-walled prayer hall has arrow slits, a low domed roof and a stone stair climbing the ridge. Visit between the five daily prayer times.
Raised in 1719 by Mughal officer Muhammad Yasin and named for a stone slab said to carry the Prophet's footprint. Three domes, a triple-arched facade and an attached madrasa stand above a walled tank in Jamalkhan.
Rebuilt in 1868 and painted in candy stripes of green, red and white, with a thicket of slim minarets and onion domes crowding the roofline — the clearest surviving example of colonial-era Bengali eclectic mosque design.
The Portuguese quarter, settled by traders and pirates from the 1530s and still home to Chittagong's Catholic families. Narrow lanes above Sadarghat hold the old parish church and crumbling shuttered merchant houses.
Over 700 Commonwealth graves from the 1942-45 Burma campaign on a terraced slope off Badshah Mia Road, tended by the CWGC. British, Indian, East African, Burmese and Japanese dead lie under frangipani and clipped lawn.
The 1913 colonial Circuit House where President Ziaur Rahman was shot dead on 30 May 1981; the bullet-marked room is preserved intact. Galleries cover his 1971 radio broadcast and Bangladesh's decade of coups.
From this low transmitter building beside the Karnaphuli, Major Ziaur Rahman read the declaration of independence over the air on 27 March 1971. It is still a working radio station with a memorial plinth outside.
Where Surya Sen's Indian Republican Army fought British troops on 22 April 1930, four days after raiding the Chittagong armoury. Twelve revolutionaries, most of them teenagers, died on the ridge; a white memorial marks it.
Chittagong Collegiate School, founded 1836 and the oldest in Bangladesh, sits below Court Hill where the red-brick Divisional Court of the 1890s crowns the ridge. The armoury raided in April 1930 stood at its foot.
The 19th-century wholesale bazaar on the Chaktai canal, still the price-setting market for pulses, sugar and spices nationwide. Sack-laden porters, brass balance scales and ledger-keeping arat trading houses fill the lanes.
The whites-only railway club stormed on 23 September 1932 by Pritilata Waddedar, who swallowed cyanide rather than be captured. A bronze statue and small memorial stand among the colonial railway bungalows of Pahartali.
The 1872 Assam Bengal Railway headquarters, a brick-and-timber pile on a wooded hilltop, still the railway's regional office. The avenue of century-old rain trees below is known locally as Shirish Tola.