Purana Qila
Old Fort
A fort passed between Humayun and Sher Shah Suri, standing over the layers of the oldest Delhi.
The walls were begun by Humayun for his city of Dinpanah and finished by Sher Shah Suri, who took his throne from him — which is why the fort's authorship depends on who is telling the story. The bastions are enormous and the three gates deliberately theatrical. Inside, two buildings survive from the Suri years: the Qila-i-Kuhna Mosque, whose five arched bays are among the most beautiful of the sixteenth century, and the octagonal Sher Mandal.
That small tower is where Humayun, restored to his throne, kept his books and where he fell to his death on the stairs in 1556. Below the fort, excavation trenches have turned up Painted Grey Ware and a sequence of occupation running back some two and a half thousand years — the basis for the long-standing identification of this mound with Indraprastha of the Mahabharata. Outside the west wall there is a boating lake, which is either bathos or continuity, depending on your mood.
- 01Qila-i-Kuhna MosqueSher Shah's mosque of 1541, red sandstone inlaid with white and slate, and near-perfect in proportion.
- 02Sher MandalThe octagonal library tower where Humayun's reign ended on a staircase.
- 03The excavation trenchOpen cuttings showing occupation layers back to the Painted Grey Ware period.
Large, dusty and lightly visited on weekday mornings. The lake and the Delhi Zoo share the western edge.