Swat wakes beneath a curtain of morning mist, Mingora’s rooftops, orchards, and the road that winds to Marghazar. On this ridge sits the White Palace (Sufaid Mahal), started in 1940 and finished in 1941 for the Wali of Swat as a summer capital — a place chosen for cool air, lawns, and long views. Its white sang-e-marmar (marble), imported from British India (Jaipur/Agra quarries), sits like a stone lighthouse before the mountains. Perched high at 7,136 ft. on Marghazar Hill, the palace is a 12–13 km day trip from Saidu Sharif/Mingora and high enough to feel like it is a different season.

Built for Miangul Abdul Wadud (Badshah Sahib) and later occupied by Miangul Jahanzeb, it is royal architecture scaled for verandas for hospitality under the breeze, high (30–35 ft.) ceilings to keep the heat out, and terraces sloping down to gardens. The interior tells the story: deodar beams, cool marble floors, old fans thought to have been installed in 1941, and salons still set up for receiving. The complex has several residential blocks besides a Royal Suite where Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip once stayed during their visit to Swat in 1961.

Today, the property is a hotel, and the heritage is behind a velvet rope no more, but it stays in everyday use. The photographic archive captures a diplomatic high point in a mountain state that, until 1969, was a princely state before officially joining Pakistan. The palace prefigured Swat’s message then — cultured, disciplined, and world-facing.
Suleiman, manager of White Palace, said, “This palace was constructed in 1941 by the ruler of Swat (the Wali). Because of its historic value, it has been restored to the condition in which it was found. Wali used to come here in summers for vacations and for hunting and was known for hosting distinguished guests, including Presidents Ayyub Khan and Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo, and Queen Elizabeth II herself. We strive to leave every visitor with fond memories.”

The white marble (sang-e-marmar) is the local legend: associated with Jaipur and Agra, used for Mughal monuments, with craftsmen and materials sourced from across the regions in the 1930s–40s — a cosmopolitan construct for a small mountain court. Inside, the cool gleam of that marble is matched by deodar timber. A row of slow-moving ceiling fans, each with an array of metal blades on long downrods, perpetually keeps the hallways in an old-world breeze.

Inside the King’s Table Room

In the main salon, the room’s central feature — the “King’s Table,” as it is locally known — remains just as it was decades ago, its surface still bearing the ghost of countless formal state dinners, visiting dignitaries, and family gatherings, with sturdy high-backed chairs arranged in ceremonial symmetry. Side tables feature old-fashioned pedestal fans with metal cages and porcelain switches, and along the walls, a gallery of framed photographs preserves the royal narrative: formal portraits of the Wali of Swat, family groups in summer attire, visiting envoys, and candid pictures of staff preparing for receptions.

Near the corridor to the veranda, a group of black-and-white prints records milestones — uniformed guards on parade, garden parties on the lower lawn, guests lingering under chandeliers that still hang overhead. Together, the marble, the fans, the King’s Table, and the photo gallery make the interiors into a living archive — less a museum, more a house of remembrance.
As the Wali of Swat used this palace as his summer house, he also constructed a mosque of the same marble (Sang E Marmar).

Mehboob Khan, a tourist, said, “Popularly known as the ‘Taj Mahal of Pakistan,’ the White Palace in Marghazar was constructed by the Swat royal family as a summer palace, as well as a venue for state audiences and meetings of council. During the 2007–09 insurgency in Swat, most sites got destroyed, but this palace was not. The locals say that there was no personal grudge against the former rulers from the militants; this is why the building is still standing today, mostly in its original form.”

Two steps down from the White Palace, a small row of stalls turns heritage into livelihood — tables of women selling Swati shawls, hand-embroidered caps (pakol), and walnut-wood carvings, trays of local honey, dried apricots and mulberries, and emerald-colored beadwork that harks back to Swat’s famed stones like emerald aqeeq. Tea kettles whistle, corn toasts on coals, and a tailor fastens a waistcoat for a visitor who wants it done by evening.

Tourism and the Local Economy

For every coach drop, it means work for the cottage workshops in Mingora and Marghazar, more trips for taxi drivers, and consistent sales for snack sellers. The palace attracts the footfall; the bazaar translates it into remuneration, attention, and repetition of visits — a testament that sensible conservation can power very local economies.
Sardar Ali, a shopkeeper in Marghazar, added, “I’ve run this shop for thirty years, selling Swat’s unique traditional crafts. For many of us, this is our only livelihood. Tourists can reach the palace for barely three months, and the rest of the year, snow closes us down. Due to recent floods in Swat, there has been a low tourist influx this season.”

The drone rises above White Palace, over Marghazar, and the sang-e-marmar changes from bright white to delicate gold, and gardens thin to neat patterns, orchards litter the land, the Swat River weaves silver through the valley. Away from the lawns, you hear the road back to Mingora. This is where a royal summer house from 1941 turned into a living place, a cheque for guides and vendors, and a quiet testament that Swat’s story is one of peace, resilience, and welcome.

To encompass the Hindu Kush ridgeline, the palace becomes not a relic but a working landmark, and we are dismissed from it much as visitors are — how the pre-Partition landmark relates to the promise of modern Pakistan to be a safe, hospitable, and economically useful place.