Darul Aman Palace

Darul Aman Palace is a European-style palace, now ruined, located about sixteen kilometers (ten miles) outside of the center of Kabul, Afghanistan. It was built in the early 1920s as a part of the endeavours of King Amanullah Khan to modernize Afghanistan. It was to be part of the new capital city (also called Darul Aman or Darulaman) that the king intended to build, connected to Kabul by a narrow gauge railway. The palace is an imposing neoclassical building on a hilltop overlooking a flat, dusty valley in the western part of the Afghan capital. Intended as the seat of a future parliament, the building was unused for many years after religious conservatives forced Amanullah from power and halted his reforms.  The Palace was gutted by fire in 1969. It was restored to house the Defence Ministry during the 1970s and 1980s. In the Communist coup of 1978, the building was set on fire. It was damaged again as rival Mujahideen factions fought for control of Kabul in the early 1990s after the end of the Soviet invasion. Heavy shelling by the Mujahideen left the building a gutted ruin.