Delhi Atlas
The cities of Delhi
Delhi is not one city but a sequence of them, laid down across nine centuries on the same plain between the ridge and the river. Seven are counted by tradition; the eighth is the one the Republic works in. Each moved for water, for defence or for a new ruler's idea of order, and each built with the stone of the last.
c. 1052–1192Lal Kot Qila Rai PithoraThe first Delhi — a Rajput citadel in the rocky south, whose walls every later conqueror walked through.1 in atlasc. 1303Siri Dar-ul-KhilafatBuilt in a hurry against the Mongols, and quarried away so thoroughly that almost nothing of it is left.—1321–1325TughlaqabadA fortress-capital finished in four years and abandoned in five, on a rocky spur in the south-east.1 in atlasc. 1327Jahanpanah Refuge of the WorldNot a new city so much as a wall thrown around the gap between two old ones.—1354FirozabadThe fifth city moved north to the riverbank, and its sultan built more than any Delhi ruler before him.1 in atlas1533–1545Shergarh DinpanahOne city with two names, begun by a Mughal and finished by the Afghan who took his throne.2 in atlas1639–1648Shahjahanabad Old DelhiThe seventh city, and the only one of the seven that is still a working city rather than a ruin.3 in atlas1911–1931New Delhi Lutyens's DelhiThe eighth city: an imperial capital announced at a durbar, finished sixteen years before the empire left.9 in atlas