In the mid-20s of the 20th cen­tu­ry, on the out­skirts of Kab­ul, Ger­man archi­tects built a palace for the roy­al fam­i­ly of Afghanistan. The mid-20s of the 20th cen­tu­ry were the real hey­day of rela­tions between Afghanistan and Ger­many. It was then that King Aman­ul­lah Khan invit­ed Ger­man archi­tects to build a new palace. 22 spe­cial­ists from Ger­many also arrived to recon­struct build­ings in the city and build new ones. With­in a cou­ple of years, Ger­man archi­tects built two majes­tic palaces in the neo­clas­si­cal style — Taj Beg, also known as Amin’s Palace, and Dar ul-Aman, which means “gate to peace.”

In those days, Kab­ul was some­what small­er than it is now, so the res­i­dences were locat­ed a dozen kilo­me­ters from the cen­ter. Aman­ul­lah Khan chose this loca­tion not by chance: Ger­man experts advised him to build new palaces far from the city, where riots broke out and res­i­dents rebelled. This was sup­posed to pro­tect the king from a pos­si­ble attack.

The Tajbeg Palace in Kab­ul was stormed by spe­cial forces and air­borne troops on Decem­ber 27, 1979, as part of Oper­a­tion Storm 333. The palace housed the Afghan leader Hafizul­lah Amin, who was killed dur­ing this oper­a­tion.

How­ev­er, after the assault, the palace was not so bad­ly dam­aged and was soon restored. The walls of the res­i­dence received the great­est amount of dam­age dur­ing the upris­ing led by Tanaya and the strug­gle of Mujahideen groups for con­trol of the city after the fall of the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Najibul­lah. The res­i­dents of Kab­ul them­selves had a hand in the destruc­tion of the palace. The locals took every­thing valu­able they could find out of the build­ing, right down to the tiles from the floor.

Despite the fact that almost all the hous­es of the cap­i­tal of Afghanistan have been restored, the Taj Beg Palace still lies in ruins. The for­mer lux­u­ry res­i­dence is cov­ered in graf­fi­ti and has become a haven for stray ani­mals. In 2012, a cam­paign began to raise funds to restore the palace to turn the build­ing into a muse­um and venue for cer­e­monies. But many res­i­dents are in favor of leav­ing the Taj Beg as is, as a reminder of the ter­ri­ble con­se­quences of war.