From a distance, the tower of Golghar in Patna may strike you as a mysterious structure. Resembling a huge wild beehive, it can be mistaken for a place of worship or an avant-garde house. The name of Golghar means «Round House». But why does it have no windows and... only one pair of doors?

It isn’t what it seems. The building isn’t a new one – it was built in 1786. And its mission is far from cult mysticism – it is an old granary.

In 1770, Bengal suffered from a devastating famine, so Warren Hastings, the governor-general of India of the time, decided to build «food banks» for the British Army. The construction of the project was carried out under the supervision of John Garstin, the engineer of the East India Company.

This gigantic granary is 29 meters high and 125 meters wide, with a wall thickness of up to 3.6 meters. It became one-of-a-kind. Regardless of the ambitious plans to create grain reserves, the replicas of the tower weren’t made anywhere else.

The tower is built of bricks with the use of lime mortar. Although the materials are simple, a special recipe for the mortar made the brickwork sound, with properties similar to cement concrete.

The granary has a shape of a stupa which is hollow inside and has a hole at the top for loading the grain. You can go up to the loading spot using two spiral staircases that wind around the edifice from the outside. The staircases are located in such a manner to enable the workers with bags to go up using one staircase, and to go down using the second one on the opposite side of the tower, thus avoiding other workers who are going up with the bags.

From the top of Golghar, you can enjoy a panoramic view of the city and the Ganges. Currently, the archaeological service has limited admission of visitors to the tower until a large-scale restoration is finished.

The tower is easy to find in the city. It is located within a 10-12 minutes walk to the west from the big urban Gandhi Maidan Park.