The lounge room of the teak villa has a seated figure of the Bogyoke (General) absorbed in a book. A dining table is set with his favorite meal of steamed yellow peas with naan. An upstairs bedroom has a crib-style cot for his two-year-old daughter, Suu Kyi.

Objects displayed at the Bogyoke Aung San Museum in Yangon offer a snapshot of General Aung San’s domestic routine shortly before tragedy ripped the family apart.

On July 19, 1947, the de facto leader of British Burma was assassinated by gunmen a few months before the nation gained independence. Several cabinet members were also killed in the attack orchestrated by a political rival. A government official on the scene reportedly lamented, “Burma is finished.”

The current military-aligned government appears keen to highlight conservation efforts at Bogyoke’s official residence despite its strained relationship with his daughter and former pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The European-style villa, with its distinctive turret, received an official seal of approval in the form of a bronze plaque in July, marking the house as a heritage building. The tourism ministry hopes the spruced-up Aung San museum, along with 6,000 other historic structures earmarked for conservation, will attract visitors from neighboring countries. International arrivals to Myanmar dipped below 1 million in 2025 compared to a record 4.7 million in 2015.

Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s president and former army chief, visited the house a year ago and inspected the vintage Wolseley car parked in a teak garage near the entrance. He urged officials to plan for the “long-term preservation” of the vehicle. Aung San traveled to Shan State in the British-made car to finalize the Panglong Agreement, the 1947 treaty that led to the creation of the Union of Burma.

“It took us about a year to complete the reconditioning,” automobile researcher Moe Myint Win told the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar. With newly installed pistons, “it may even be drivable,” he added.

While the Tourism Ministry was busy drawing up conservation plans for Aung San’s residence, other symbols of the general’s legacy were disappearing.

Radio Free Asia and domestic media outlets reported that the government had removed several bronze statues of Aung San in recent months. A portrait at the front gate of Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakeside villa in Yangon was also taken down in June. President Min Aung Hlaing’s spokesperson issued a statement asserting that only “disproportionate or incorrectly shaped” statues had been removed to preserve the dignity of a “pivotal historical figure.”

Aung San’s statues have been “canceled” on both ends of the political spectrum. The installation of a golden image in Kayah (Karenni) State triggered protests by local activists in 2019 and was seen as an attempt to paper over “suppression of the past.” The Panglong Agreement granting autonomy to ethnic minority states had fallen by the wayside 60 years earlier as the government gravitated towards centralized control. The general’s political heirs “failed to keep Aung San’s promises of federalism,” observed a scholar-activist who writes about Rakhine State.

In the last decade, ethnic armies replaced political parties as the main drivers for autonomy “after the issue of federalism was forcefully put on ice by successive military governments,” wrote a political commentator from Shan State. Under the 1947 Constitution, Shan State was given the option to secede ten years after independence. Following a military coup in 1962, however, the constitution (which Aung San helped draft) was abolished, and certain states lost the legal right to leave the union.

The Yangon residence is a less controversial piece of Aung San’s legacy. Next July, the museum will mark the 80th anniversary of his assassination, commemorated annually as Martyrs Day. Students, monks, historians and a few international tourists will visit the renovated rooms, a crop patch, and the ornamental pond where one of his sons died in a drowning accident in 1953.

Aung San Suu Kyi last visited the villa in 2017. She was released from prison in April but remains under house arrest.