Mohatta Palace

History of the Museum



Shiv Rattan Mohatta

In 1927, Shiv Rattan Mohatta, a successful Marwari entrepreneur, commissioned a palatial house in the affluent seaside neighbourhood of Clifton. Mohatta had made his fortune as a ship handler and trader. The architect commissioned for his palace, Ahmed Hussein Agha, was one of the first Muslim architects of India and had come from Jaipur to take up an assignment as chief surveyor for the Karachi Muncipality. Ahmed Hussein Agha designed a number of buildings in Karachi but Mohatta Palace was to prove the coup de maitre of his professional career. Working in a Mughal revival style with a combination of locally available yellow Gizri and pink stone from Jodhpur, he sought to recreate the Anglo Mughal palaces of the Rajput princes.



History of the Museum

Post Partition and Museum

At Partition in 1947, Mohatta Palace was acquired by the newly established Government of Pakistan to house its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the Foreign Office moved to Islamabad in 1964, the palace was given to Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah. After her demise in 1964, her sister Shireen Bai lived here until her death in 1980. The property then went into litigation and remained sealed until 1995, when it was formally purchased by the Government of Sindh, in conjunction with the Federal Government, for a sum of six million rupees. It was agreed that the monument would house a museum that would foster awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of Pakistan and of the region. An autonomous Board of Trustees was set up to oversee the restoration and adaptive use of the monument. The first two phases of the restoration programme were successfully completed in August 1999 and the Museum opened its doors to the public on 15th September 1999. Since then it has held many major exhibitions displaying artefacts that have never been seen before; these thematic displays were culled from both public and private collections. The Museum has grown from three galleries in 1999 to forty four in 2005.



Mohatta Palace Museum: Present Day



The Mohatta Palace Museum is a source of pride for the citizens of Karachi as it aspires to become a museum of international standing and a beacon of hope and commitment to the city. None of this would have been possible without the support of the Federal Government, the Government of Sindh and our key donors who share our vision for a symbol of a cultural renaissance in Karachi.

The Mohatta Palace is located in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It was built by Shivratan Chandraratan Mohatta, a Hindu Marwari businessman from modern day Rajasthan in India, in 1927, as his summer home. The architect of the palace was Agha Ahmed Hussain. He built the Palace in the tradition of stone palaces in Rajasthan, using pink Jodhpur stone in combination with the local yellow stone from Gizri. The amalgam gave the palace a distinctive presence in an elegant neighbourhood, characterised by Indo-Saracenic architecture which was located not far from the sea.