10 Top Places to Visit in Delhi

Shah Jahan finished the Masjid-i-Jahan-Numa in 1656 after six years of work by around 5,000 labourers, and the courtyard still holds 25,000 worshippers. Three marble domes crown a red sandstone prayer hall flanked by two minarets of 40 metres. The mosque faces the Red Fort across Netaji Subhash Marg, which makes the pairing obvious on any Old Delhi morning.

Entry to the mosque is free. Climbing the southern minaret costs INR 100 and delivers the finest rooftop view in Old Delhi, with the Red Fort on one side and the roofs of Chandni Chowk on the other. A camera fee of INR 300 applies. Shoulders and knees must be covered and robes are lent at the gate. The mosque shuts to visitors during the five daily prayers, and the Friday midday closure runs longer.

Pro Tip: Use Gate 3 on the eastern side for the shortest route to the minaret stair, and climb between 3 pm and 4:30 pm when the light hits the Red Fort face-on. Leave your shoes with the attendant for INR 20 rather than carrying them around the courtyard.

Jahanara Begum, Shah Jahan's eldest daughter, laid out Chandni Chowk in 1650 as a boulevard split by a canal that caught the moonlight, which is where the name comes from. The canal disappeared long ago. The main road now runs 1.3 km from the Red Fort to Fatehpuri Masjid with a pedestrianised central stretch, and the trade that matters happens in the lanes branching off it.

Kinari Bazaar deals in wedding trim and zari embroidery. Dariba Kalan sells silver by weight. Khari Baoli at the western end is the largest wholesale spice market in Asia. Paranthe Wali Gali is a lane barely two metres wide where three families have fried stuffed parathas since the 1870s, at INR 80 to INR 150 a plate, under EUR 2. A cycle rickshaw loop runs INR 100 to INR 200. It is loud, tight and crowded, and that is precisely the appeal.

Pro Tip: Walk the lanes between 10 am and noon on a weekday, once the wholesale trucks have unloaded and before the afternoon crush. Many shops shut on Sunday. Bring a scarf for Khari Baoli, where airborne chilli dust will have you coughing within a minute.

Empress Bega Begum commissioned this mausoleum for the second Mughal emperor between 1565 and 1572, making it the first garden tomb on the Indian subcontinent and the first to use the char bagh plan of four quartered gardens. The red sandstone structure and its 42.5-metre white marble dome became the direct architectural model for the Taj Mahal some 80 years later. UNESCO lists it as Humayun's Tomb, Delhi.

The wider complex contains more than 100 Mughal graves and rewards the full circuit. Isa Khan's octagonal tomb, just inside the entrance, predates the main mausoleum by 20 years and is usually empty. Entry costs INR 40 for Indian citizens and INR 600 (about EUR 6.50) for foreign visitors under the separate foreign-visitor tier, with children under 15 free. Open sunrise to sunset daily. Ninety minutes is fair; photographers will want longer.

Pro Tip: Get in within the first hour after opening and turn left to Isa Khan's tomb before walking to the main platform. You will have the great dome almost to yourself, and the low sun reads the sandstone as orange rather than flat brown.

Qutub Minar climbs 72.5 metres in five tapering storeys of fluted red sandstone and marble, begun by Qutb-ud-din Aibak in 1199 and completed by his successor Iltutmish. Bands of Quranic inscription wrap every level. The surrounding Qutb complex holds the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, the earliest in northern India, and the 7-metre Iron Pillar of the 4th century, which has resisted rust for more than 1,600 years and remains a genuine metallurgical puzzle.

You cannot climb the tower. The internal staircase closed in 1981 after a fatal stampede and has stayed shut. That takes nothing away from the site, since the ruins around the base repay a slow hour. Entry runs INR 40 for Indian citizens and INR 600 (roughly EUR 6.50) for foreign nationals on the separate tier. Open sunrise to sunset. Mehrauli Archaeological Park adjoins the south side, costs nothing, and scatters the Jamali Kamali mosque and dozens of tombs through open scrub.

Pro Tip: Pair the ticketed complex with a free hour in Mehrauli Archaeological Park next door, and arrive after 4 pm once the tour buses have pulled out. Late afternoon light sits well on the west face of the minaret and the queue is a fraction of the morning length.

India Gate is a 42-metre arch designed by Edwin Lutyens and completed in 1931, carrying the names of more than 13,000 soldiers of the British Indian Army who died between 1914 and 1921. The National War Memorial behind it opened in 2019 and commemorates those killed since independence. The avenue running west, renamed Kartavya Path from Rajpath in 2022, ends at Rashtrapati Bhavan 2.3 km away.

The 2022 redevelopment added lawns, canals with boating, granite walkways and food kiosks along both flanks, so the promenade now functions as a public park in the evening rather than a monument you tick off in five minutes. Access is free and the arch is floodlit after dark. Rashtrapati Bhavan and its Amrit Udyan gardens require separate online booking and open only in set seasons. State food stalls near the eastern end sell regional snacks cheaply.

Pro Tip: Come after 7 pm. The arch is lit, the temperature drops several degrees, and Delhi families fill the lawns. Park on Man Singh Road and walk in rather than circling the hexagon, which gridlocks on weekend evenings.

The Lotus Temple opened in 1986 as the Bahai House of Worship for the Indian subcontinent, designed by Iranian architect Fariborz Sahba. Twenty-seven petals clad in Greek Pentelic marble fold into nine sides, each with its own entrance, around a central hall seating 2,500. Nine surrounding pools cool the structure and mirror the shell. Visitor numbers have passed 100 million, which puts it among the most-visited buildings on earth.

There is no altar, no idol and no clergy. The hall exists for silent meditation and the staff enforce that silence firmly. Readings from any scripture are permitted; sermons are not. Entry is free. Shoes come off before the steps and photography inside the hall is prohibited. The weekend queue can run 45 minutes. Closed on Mondays. Twenty minutes inside is enough, and the gardens deserve another twenty.

Pro Tip: Turn up at 9 am on a weekday and the queue is five minutes instead of 45. Walk the outer garden path anticlockwise afterwards for the cleanest sightline onto all nine petal groups without other visitors in the frame.

Swaminarayan Akshardham opened in 2005 on the eastern bank of the Yamuna, built from Rajasthani pink sandstone and Italian Carrara marble with no structural steel or concrete anywhere in the monument. The central shrine stands 43 metres high on 234 carved pillars, under 9 domes, with roughly 20,000 sculpted figures across its surfaces. Around 7,000 craftsmen and 3,000 volunteers worked on it. The grounds cover 100 acres.

Entry to the grounds is free. The exhibition halls, the boat ride through 10,000 years of Indian history and the musical fountain are ticketed together at around INR 220 for adults, about EUR 2.40. Security is the strictest on this list by a wide margin: no phones, no cameras, no bags, no electronics of any kind pass the gate. Closed on Mondays. Budget three hours if you take the exhibitions, ninety minutes if you do not.

Pro Tip: Leave your phone and bag where you are staying, or use a locker at Akshardham metro station, rather than joining the on-site cloakroom line that runs 30 minutes at weekends. The musical fountain at sunset is the one paid extra worth buying.

Lodhi Gardens spreads across 90 acres between Khan Market and Safdarjung's Tomb, holding the mausoleums of Sayyid and Lodhi dynasty rulers from the 15th and 16th centuries. Mohammed Shah's tomb of 1444 is the oldest structure on the site. Sikandar Lodi's tomb of 1517 sits at the northern end inside its own walled enclosure. The Bara Gumbad and Sheesh Gumbad face each other across a lawn, their domes still showing traces of blue tile.

The park took its current landscaped form in 1936 and was reworked in 1968 by the American architect Joseph Allen Stein. Delhi residents use it hard: joggers from 6 am, yoga groups on the lawns by seven, families through the late afternoon. Entry is free and the gates open from sunrise until 8 pm. There is a bonsai garden, a rose garden and a glasshouse. Nothing is roped off, so you walk straight into the tombs.

Pro Tip: Enter from the Lodhi Road gate near the India International Centre and head north. You pass Mohammed Shah's tomb, then Bara Gumbad, then Sikandar Lodi in a clean line with no doubling back. December and January fog before 8 am makes the domes photograph beautifully.

Gurudwara Bangla Sahib occupies the site of a bungalow owned by Raja Jai Singh, where the eighth Sikh Guru, Har Krishan, stayed in 1664 and treated victims of a smallpox and cholera outbreak before dying of the illness himself at the age of eight. The gilded dome and the sarovar, the large tank of water regarded as holy, define the complex. The present building dates from 1783, when Sardar Baghel Singh had it constructed.

The langar, or community kitchen, serves free vegetarian meals to tens of thousands of people daily regardless of faith, and visitors are welcome to help wash the steel plates. Entry is free and the gurudwara never shuts. Heads must be covered; orange bandanas are handed out at the entrance. Shoes go to the free deposit counter. Photography is allowed in the courtyard but not during ceremonies. Connaught Place is a fifteen-minute walk away, so this slots easily into a central Delhi afternoon.

Pro Tip: Eat in the langar rather than just looking at it. Meals run continuously and you sit on the floor in rows with everyone else. Arrive around 11 am on a weekday for the calmest turnover, and walk clockwise around the sarovar as local worshippers do.