Shalamar Gardens

UNESCO World Heritage Site (1981), Inscribed Together With Lahore Fort; Laid Out For Shah Jahan And Completed 1641 42 · Lahore, Punjab

The Shalamar Gardens are a Mughal pleasure garden laid out for the emperor Shah Jahan and completed in 1641 and 1642, the same emperor who built the Taj Mahal. They follow the Persian idea of paradise as a walled garden with water, and they are among the finest examples of the form anywhere. The garden falls in three terraces, each lower than the last, with a long central canal, marble pavilions and hundreds of fountains; water from a canal brought from the Ravi fed the fountains, and in the middle terrace it pours over a carved marble cascade into a great tank with a marble platform in its centre. The gardens are a World Heritage Site together with Lahore Fort, across the city. They are also a real city park, full of families at weekends, and in the past they were neglected; widening of the Grand Trunk Road and a new metro line close by have worried conservationists. The fountains run only at certain times. Come in the late afternoon in spring, when they are on and the light is soft on the red sandstone.

Grand Trunk Road, Baghbanpura, Lahore, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

Open daily from morning until evening. There is a ticket, with a higher foreigners' rate. The fountains do not run all the time; they are usually on at weekends, holidays or special occasions - ask at the gate. The gardens are about eight kilometres east of the Walled City on the Grand Trunk Road, easily reached by rickshaw or ride-hailing.

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