Within 20 km of Mandalay lie four abandoned royal capitals — Inwa, Amarapura, Sagaing and Mingun. This route traces Burmese power from the 14th-century hill pagodas of Sagaing through Konbaung teak halls to the 1945 battlefields that levelled the city.
Teak monastery raised in 1834 on 267 whole teak posts, the tallest near 18 m, carved with peacocks and lotus finials. Novices still recite lessons in the dim main hall. Cross the Myitnge on the small ferry, then continue by horse cart.
Built in 1822 by Queen Me Nu for her royal abbot, this stuccoed brick monastery imitates a teak building in masonry — which is why it outlived every wooden hall at Inwa. Restored after the 1838 quake by King Mindon's daughter.
Founded in 1312 when Sagaing was capital of a breakaway Shan kingdom, the pagoda crowns a ridge of some 600 monasteries and nunneries. The colonnaded terrace looks over the Ayeyarwady and the 1934 Inwa Bridge.
A 46 m white dome finished in 1636 by King Thalun to mark the return of the capital to Inwa, modelled on Sri Lanka's Ruwanwelisaya rather than the usual Burmese bell shape. Ringed by 812 stone pillars, each with a niche and oil lamp.
The 4 m bronze Buddha was hauled here from Mrauk-U in 1785 as war booty after Bodawpaya conquered Arakan. Six tonnes of gold leaf applied by pilgrims have swollen its body out of shape. Six surviving Khmer bronzes stand in a side shrine.
Over 6,300 Commonwealth graves from the 1944–45 Burma campaign, when the Fourteenth Army retook the city and shelled the palace compound to ash. Rows of Indian, African, British and Burmese names on plain Portland-style markers.
The only surviving building of Mindon's wooden palace: his private apartment, dismantled and moved out of the citadel by Thibaw in 1880 because his father died in it. Its removal is why it escaped the 1945 fires that took everything else.
Gilded in 1847 by King Pagan Min over a Buddha image from Bodh Gaya. In October 1919 monks here forced out British visitors who refused to remove their shoes; the trial that followed turned the footwear question into a national cause.
A teak monastery paid for in 1895 by two Chinese jade merchants who made fortunes trading Kachin stone under British rule. Carved balustrades show jataka scenes and rows of demons; the raised platform is worn smooth by monks' feet.
Laid out in the 1900s by Italian designer Count Caldrari for the colonial administration, Zegyo's original arcades were bombed in 1945 and rebuilt twice. The freestanding clock tower still marks the old grid's commercial heart.
Finished in 1847 at the second Konbaung capital, its porches carry painted panels of 19th-century Burmese life — court dress, boats, foreign envoys — done before photography reached the kingdom. Rare secular imagery in a religious building.
Bagyidaw cast the 5 m bronze Buddha here in 1823, then abandoned it when he shifted the capital; it sat exposed for decades. A bodhi sapling from Bodh Gaya was planted by Prime Minister U Nu in 1952 as an independence gesture.