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No. 76. Amerapoora. Sindu Shwe koo Pagoda.

No. 76. Amerapoora. Sindu Shwe koo Pagoda.

Photographer: Tripe, Linnaeus

Medium: Photographic print

Date: 1855

Shelfmark: Photo 61/1(76)

Item number: 61176

Genre: Photograph

Photograph by Linnaeus Tripe, from a portfolio of 120 prints, taken at Amarapura in Burma (Myanmar). In 1855 a British mission was sent to King Mindon Min of Burma to negotiate a settlement regarding Pegu, annexed by the British following the Second Anglo-Burmese War in 1852. Linnaeus Tripe was the official photographer on this mission, his pioneering architectural and topographical views of the country are an important photographic record. Amarapura, on the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) river, was twice the capital of the Burmese kings of the Konbaung dynasty: from 1782 (the year of its foundation by King Bodawpaya) to 1823 and again from 1837 to 1860, after which Mandalay, 11 km to the north, became capital. Amarapura was the site of the first British Embassy to Burma in 1795, and played host again to Tripe's Mission. The city was built on a square plan, surrounded by a wall and a moat. Each side of the wall measured 1.6 km and had three gates leading into the main streets that divided the city into equal square blocks, with a massive wooden palace at its centre. The palace was dismantled in 1857, and its materials reused to build the new royal capital, Mandalay. Of this general view of the temple, with chinthe or leogriph guarding entrance at right. Tripe wrote, 'One of the most graceful buildings about the city. It is of white stucco, the scroll-work being gilt; the canopy on the summit is of wood, gilt and inlaid with mirror'.

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