A new look at Old Delhi: walking in the walled city of India's capital

The city's historic heart remains utterly distinct, with an enticing confection of crowds, clamour and colour

Old Delhi's 17th-century Jami Masjid is India’s largest mosque. Unsplash

I’m perched on a lofty Old Delhi rooftop gamely trying to fly a small red kite.

Awkwardly tugging its string, the kite dips and yaws, eventually crashing on to a distant terrace, scattering cats and delighting children. My gaze is drawn to the pale onion dome and 40-metre high minarets of the 17th-century Jami Masjid, India’s largest mosque, which pierce the skyline barely 300 metres away.

In the 1640s, when Mughal emperor Shah Jahan raised the Taj Mahal, he was also constructing his new capital Shahjahanabad, today simply called Old Delhi. Around 14 imposing gates notched 6km of muscular walls. Its thoroughfares ranged from arrow straight markets lined with shops, elegant havelis (nobles’ or merchants’ mansions) and mosques to winding lanes and gated alleys. Countless trades formed their own distinct enclaves: indigo sellers and moneylenders here, booksellers and jewellers there.

Today those walls have all but disappeared and just a handful of disused gates survive as fenced monuments. But the feel and atmosphere of Old Delhi remain utterly distinct, with an almost zany confection of crowds, clamour and colour. It’s also home to the huge Jami Masjid and the vast Red Fort, as well as Asia’s largest spice market.

Seemingly endless bazaars hide cubbyhole shops and tangy street food and, among its clutch of venerable temples, is one housing a bird hospital. In Haveli Dharampura, a restored 19th-century mansion and my kite’s launch pad, there’s now a fine hotel offering a more intimate experience of the old city.

A time capsule from the Mughal era

Before its restoration, the building's predicament mirrored that of much of Old Delhi – properties in tangled multiple ownership, neglect fostering decay, and ill-considered renovations insidiously eroding the neighbourhood’s historic character.

Vidyun Goel, operations director and daughter of proprietor Vijay Goel (an erstwhile government minister and local politician), explains: “The original idea was simply to save the 19th-century haveli; he considered making it a museum, then a restaurant, but there were no takers. The hotel was almost an afterthought.”

After six years’ of painstaking restoration, 60 cramped rooms became 28, 14 for guests. Stonework was stripped of paint, revealing decorative carvings. Masons skilled at lime mortar and plasterwork resurrected its fabric. Windows and arches were unblocked, joists and sandstone brackets replaced, and cabling discretely hidden. You’d hardly notice the small corner lift.

Delhi-born Goel senior is a passionate advocate of Old Delhi’s preservation. In his 2003 book Delhi, The Emperor’s City, he writes of the Mughals’ mighty capital thriving on “Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb” – essentially a tolerant, mutually respectful fusion of Muslim and Hindu culture embracing everything from cuisine to recreation, architecture to literature.

That sentiment might seem a bit of an outlier in the country’s current politics, but in terms of the city’s high-end accommodation, Haveli Dharampura’s location in the heart of Old Delhi makes it a real rarity. Tucked away down a narrow earthy lane lit by a ribbon of daylight, only pedestrians and scooters can reach its entrance. Tiny shops, hole-in-the-wall tailors and modest homes mark the way. Stepping up through the arched porch into its deep paved courtyard brings one within touching distance of the romance of Shahjahanabad’s heyday.

I’d already seen the area’s core sights; I climbed one of the great mosque’s minarets for bracing views while crowds queued in the courtyard below for entry to a small hall preserving hallowed relics of the Prophet himself. Barely half a kilometre to the east gleam the Red Fort’s massive walls, their perfect angularity masking its interior’s partial destruction by British troops in the wake of the 1857 Mutiny. Hankering after a more immersive exploration, I hooked up with Karni Singh, a young academic and guide, to whisk me through the old city’s highways and byways.

Famous forts, chai tea and old school chaos

We began with cups of steaming chai, its milk boiled and reduced to a comforting richness, in the colourful stalls and steps of Meena Bazaar. Over the next couple of hours, we strolled labyrinthine lanes and streets, from rude hubbub to hushed calm. Naughara (or nine houses), a small gated alley off Kinari Bazaar, epitomises an idyllic slice of Old Delhi’s tight urban living: pretty arched doorways with stepped porches softened by potted plants. Its havelis all belong to an extended Jain family, one doubles as a jewellery boutique and there’s a Jain temple wedged into the alley’s end.

Stretching almost 1.5km west from the Red Fort, nearby Chandni Chowk is probably the old city’s most famous street. Named after a moon-reflecting pool and water channels that anchored its centre, 17th-century bazaars boasted thousands of shops, among them many silver merchants. Grand imperial processions would amble down here towards the Fatehpuri Mosque at the other end.

Last time I came, this was the last word in stupendous chaos: people, rickshaws, bicycles, carts and vehicles all clogged together, an almost comical stew where everyone had right of way so, of course, no one got anywhere at all. But since late 2021, the Chowk has been tamed, tidied and pedestrianised, with only dedicated rickshaws allowed access – part of a long-awaited rehabilitation project that predated Covid-19, but which the pandemic’s restrictions helped bring to fruition. For old school chaos, late afternoon in Chawri Bazaar still hits the spot.

Karni led me up another side street dedicated to lights, lamps and everything electrical. Ducking into a passage, we stood before the fluted neoclassical columns of Bhagirath Palace. “Lloyds Bank Limited” remains emblazoned on the crumbling hoarding-obscured facade, but its earlier 19th-century story is a picaresque tale involving a one-time concubine-turned-socialite who married the "Butcher of Patna" (an Austrian mercenary), befriended a Mughal emperor and hosted grand parties with British officials.

Later, outside the Chowk’s Punjab National Bank Building, I learn how a bomb was thrown from its plain windows at Viceroy Lord Hardinge in 1912. Perched in his elephant’s howdah, Hardinge sustained only superficial wounds, but the so-called Delhi Conspiracy Case that arose underlined rising tensions between nascent revolutionaries and the Raj.

We paused at Paranthe Wali Gali, a famed cluster of unfussy eateries specialising in aromatic parathas – fresh flaky flatbreads typically filled with spiced vegetables – before marching on to Khari Baoli, a huge wholesale spice market. Fat sacks of enigmatic produce and a tumult of bearers with overloaded hand carts signal you’re close. You'll likely smell it before seeing it: so pungent is the air from dried peppers and chillies that rookie visitors often seem to sneeze and splutter their way through a tour.

Heading back towards Dharampura, Karni steered me through the Ballimaran neighbourhood to visit Haveli Mirza Ghalib. A popular Urdu poet across the Subcontinent, Ghalib made his name in the dying days of the Mughal empire. By 1850, he’d become something akin to a poet laureate for emperor Bahadur Shah II, though his real fame was posthumous. The modest ground floor museum displays some of his writing, possessions and garments.

His poetry was wistful and enigmatic, but his dry wit shone particularly through his letters. In one, he described marriage as the second imprisonment after life’s initial confinement. In others he lamented Delhi’s physical decline, which mirrored that of the Mughal nobility on which he leaned. Perhaps we’re lucky any of it has survived.

If you go

The writer stayed as a guest of Haveli Dharampura, where double rooms start from Dh860, including taxes and breakfast. Organised experiences include guided Old Delhi heritage walks. Another option for guided walks is Street Connections, which, in partnership with the Salaam Baalak Trust has rehabilitated street children, now guides, lending a more personal slant on Old Delhi.