Bogyoke Aung San Museum

The Bogyoke Aung San Museum occupies the former family home at 25 Bogyoke Museum Lane in Bahan Township, Yangon, Myanmar. General Aung San, founder of the modern Burmese army and the leading figure in the independence movement, lived here with his wife Daw Khin Kyi and their children, including the future Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, from 1945 until his assassination on 19 July 1947. He and several members of his interim cabinet were shot at the Secretariat building during a meeting, months before Burma became independent in January 1948. The house is a two-storey wooden and masonry villa in a mid-20th-century colonial style, set in a garden, and the rooms are kept as they were in the 1940s. Visitors can see the family living and dining rooms, the study, bedrooms and the General's personal belongings, including furniture, books, clothing, photographs and the family car. Displays of photographs and documents trace his career, from the student boycotts of 1936 and the Thirty Comrades who trained in Japan, to the Anti-Fascist Organisation, the 1947 Panglong Agreement with ethnic leaders and the Aung San-Attlee agreement in London. The curatorial approach is a house museum arranged by room, with a largely chronological narrative in the photographs. The house was opened to the public as a museum after the family left, and it is operated under the state with periodic repairs to the wooden structure and garden. Visitors are asked to dress modestly and remove shoes in some rooms, and photography rules vary. The museum is a short ride from Inya Lake and the University of Yangon. Entry is charged at a modest kyat fee for foreign visitors. Memorial events are held at the house on Martyrs' Day, 19 July.