The Government House in Murree has become a popular tourist attraction ever since it was opened to the public on Sundays.

Although the interior of the building is not open to visitors, many people visit on Sunday to enjoy the expansive green lawns.

There is no official history of the Government House, which was built in 1954, available for visitors, nor is there a guide. There are also no arrangements for visitors to see the house itself, as all the rooms are locked by the controller.

Nevertheless, a large number of people visit the house every week. The first day the house was opened to the public, employees said 1,687 people turned up. Another 1,353 visited the week after, 691 the week after that and around 1,000 last Sunday.

The last Punjab government spent Rs600 million on this building, which is even rumoured to have gold-plated toilets. According to the incumbent government, the annual maintenance expenditure on the building is Rs35m.

The PTI-led federal government recently decided to transform the building into a heritage boutique hotel, but work on that has not started yet.

While speaking to Dawn, visitors to the house had a number of complaints about the lack of details about the building’s history and the decision to keep its doors closed save for a path leading to the gardens.

“This is a beautiful building... it’s a good picnic spot. I would ask the government, while executing the project to transform the building, not to touch the beautiful lawn and [to keep it] open to the public,” said Mohammad Shoaib, who had travelled to Murree from Gujranwala.

Another visitor, Khawaja Hassan Iftikhar, said that opening the gate to visitors was a good step by the government, but there should also be arrangements for people to enter the main buildings.

Others said the government could generate funds by introducing nominally priced tickets, particularly in the summer when millions of tourists visit the hill resort.

Government House Murree is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Governor House. Officially, there is no governor house in the area. Another so-called governor house in Bhurban has also been opened to the public, although a stop there revealed that it was visited by a much smaller number of people than the Government House.

A ceremony was held at the Bhurban ‘governor house’ recently where Punjab Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar opened the house to the public. It emerged later that the house was not a governor house, but rather a forest department rest-house.

The building was constructed in 1909 as a residence for high-ranking officials mostly from the Punjab forest department. In 2002, it was acquired by then Punjab governor Khalid Maqbool as the governor’s annex, but the Punjab government in 2013 restored its status as a forest department rest-house.

Although confusion over the actual title of the building persists, visitors are able to move around the premises. However, they are not allowed in the buildings as the rooms and halls are closed to the public.

A building official said: “On the direction of the government we are not barring anyone from entering the premises on Sundays. People can visit, but we cannot open the houses of the buildings.”

He added that high-profile guests may hire rooms at the house through the Punjab government.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2018