Lavished in carved panels, this fine teak monastery-temple is noted for its carvings, particularly the interior gilded Jataka scenes (past-life stories of the Buddha). The building once stood within the Mandalay Palace complex as the royal apartment of King Mindon, who died inside it in 1878.
Reputedly unable to cope with Mindon’s ghost, his successor, King Thibaw, had the building dismantled, carted out of the palace complex and reassembled outside the fortress walls, where it was converted into a monastery (1880). It’s a good thing he did, as all other palace buildings were later lost to WWII bombs.
