Description of the attraction
The name of the palace “Darul Aman” is interpreted in two meanings - as “the house of the world” and “the house of Aman (Ullah)”. The palace, built in the style of European architecture, now destroyed, is located sixteen kilometers from the central part of Kabul. The Darul Aman residence was designed and built in the 1920s during King Amanullah's reforms to renew and modernize Afghanistan.
The building was planned to be part of the newest capital, which the khan intended to build and connect with Kabul by rail. The palace looks like a massive neoclassical building atop a hill overlooking a flat, dusty valley. It was supposed that the parliament would sit here, but the building was not used for many years, because how the conservatives removed Amanullah from government and stopped his transformation.
Darul Aman was destroyed by fire in 1969, later renovated, and in the 1970s and 1980s, it was housed by the defense department. During the communist coup in 1978, the building caught fire due to deliberate arson, but it did not burn down. The palace was destroyed again when rival mujahideen factions fought for control of Kabul in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet invasion. The greatest destruction of the building was brought by shelling from heavy artillery and looters.
In 2005, a plan for the restoration of the palace was presented with the intention of placing it as the seat of the future government of Afghanistan. Funding for the project was to be carried out mainly through voluntary subsidies from foreign citizens and wealthy residents of the country's citizens. For five years, by July 2010, there were no signs of restoration work. The palace came under another attack by the Taliban on April 15, 2012.
There is little hope for the reconstruction of Darul Aman, since the country is not a very happy stop for the implementation of such projects, and in December 2015, the construction of a new parliament building was completed.
