Seven cities stacked on one plain, each built by someone certain they were the last. Delhi rewards travellers who treat it as an arrival city worth three days rather than one night.
Why I send you to Delhi
I lived in Delhi for nine years and still went to Mehrauli for the first time as a guest of someone who knew it. That is the whole idea behind our Delhi days: the city is unreadable alone on day one and generous by day three. I will always push you to give it three, and to spend one Thursday evening sitting on the marble at Nizamuddin, understanding none of the Persian.
Rushani — Chief Curators
Places to visit
The Mughal garden tomb that rehearsed the Taj Mahal.
Built in 1570 by Humayun's widow, and the first great charbagh tomb in India. Go at opening time, walk the outer enclosures — Isa Khan's octagonal tomb and the Sunder Nursery next door — before the light hardens.
The oldest continuously inhabited corner of Delhi.
The Qutb Minar gets the crowds; the Mehrauli Archaeological Park beside it has forty monuments across a thousand years and almost no one in it. Do the two together over a morning.
Old Delhi, on foot and by rickshaw.
Chandni Chowk, the spice market at Khari Baoli, Jama Masjid's courtyard, and lanes where the paratha and kebab shops are four generations deep. We pair this with a walking guide and go before 9am.
Shah Jahan's capital fortress, 1648.
The Lahori Gate, Diwan-i-Khas and the marble Rang Mahal, plus a museum most visitors walk past. Closed Mondays. Combine with Jama Masjid, ten minutes away.
The sixth city, on ground occupied for two millennia.
Sher Shah Suri's fort on a mound where excavations found painted grey ware from 1000 BCE. Quiet lawns, a lake, and the library tower Humayun fell down. A good early-evening walk.
A whole abandoned city of sloping stone walls.
Built and deserted within five years in the 1320s. Six kilometres of ramparts, bastions and cisterns, and usually no one there but parakeets. Wear proper shoes; it is rough ground.
Fifteenth-century tombs in ninety acres of park.
Delhi's best walk. Sayyid and Lodhi tombs, the Bara Gumbad mosque and the Athpula bridge, all inside a park where the city actually exercises. Perfect for a jetlagged first morning.
A medieval reservoir, madrasa and tomb complex.
Firoz Shah's 14th-century college above a water tank, with a deer park behind and a village of galleries and cafés in front. Come an hour before sunset.
The imperial capital, laid out 1911–1931.
Rajpath, the sandstone secretariats and Rashtrapati Bhavan's 340 rooms, plus the quieter avenues behind. Best seen slowly by car early on a Sunday, when the roads are empty.
Things to do
Parathas, kebabs and fresh jalebi — early, on foot.
Thursday evenings, arrive well before dusk.
Ruins with no signage at all, and nobody in them.
Delhi's newest infrastructure past its oldest stones.
A slow, green afternoon.
Travels well as
Tell us your dates and we'll draft a Delhi itinerary at the pace you actually want to travel.