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Dhaka is a city that never seems to stop. Nearly 14 million people in the city proper move through streets so dense with cycle-rickshaws, CNGs, and pedestrians that traffic doesn't so much flow as negotiate. It has been like this for a long time: under the Mughals in the 17th century, Dhaka served as the capital of Bengal Subah and was famous across the trading world for its weavers, who produced a silk-cotton muslin so fine it was called 'woven air' -- a cloth so light that legend held a sari of it could be threaded through a finger ring.

Old Dhaka, south of the modern city, holds the traces of that history.

The Lalbagh Fort, begun in 1678 by Prince Muhammad Azam, sits incomplete by deliberate choice: construction was abandoned after his fiancee died within its walls and it was considered ill-omened to continue. The Ahsan Manzil, the Pink Palace built in 1872 on the bank of the Buriganga River, is one of the most photogenic buildings in the country, now a museum. The streets of Old Dhaka run through the cutlery market, the flower district, and the sweetmeat sellers, while the cycle-rickshaw painters who decorate vehicle hoods treat their craft with the same seriousness as any gallery artist.