Architecture

The great stupa of Taxila, said to have been founded by Ashoka over relics of the Buddha, surrounded by the cells and chapels of a monastery.

A Buddhist monastery on a ridge north of Mardan, the most complete in Gandhara, with its stupa court, monks' cells and assembly hall still standing.

A great Buddhist stupa of the Kushan age on the plain south of Rawalpindi. Ranjit Singh's general Ventura dug into it in 1830 and found relic boxes and Kushan and Roman coins.

A cluster of Hindu temples around a sacred pool in the Salt Range, among the oldest standing temples of the Punjab.

Tall, tiered temples of the Hindu Shahi period on a hilltop in the Salt Range, among the last temples of their kind in the Punjab.

A whole complex of Hindu temples carved out of a single sandstone ridge in the Kangra hills.

A hilltop fort of the Hindu Shahis guarding a pass in the Salt Range, taken by Mahmud of Ghazni. Here the scholar al-Biruni measured the dip of the horizon from the hill to work out the size of the Earth.

The shrine of Ali Hujwiri, Data Ganj Bakhsh, author of the Kashf al-Mahjub, the oldest Persian book on Sufism; today one of the largest shrines in South Asia.

A temple of Shiva as the lord of physicians, built by two merchants in 1204 and still in worship.

At the urs each year pilgrims crowd through its Bihishti Darwaza, the 'gate of paradise', opened only for those days.

The square brick tomb, with an octagonal drum and a dome, of the Suhrawardi saint who made Multan one of the great centres of Sufism.

The great octagonal tomb that rises over Multan, banded in blue and white tiles.

An octagonal tomb sheathed in blue and white tiles, half of it swept away by flood, standing over the old Sufi town of Uch.

Sher Shah Suri's enormous fortress on the road through the Salt Range, built to hold down the Gakhars and keep Humayun from coming back.

A hilltop monastery of the Kanphata yogis of Gorakhnath near Jhelum, where Guru Nanak is said to have meditated and where Ranjha comes to have his ears pierced in Waris Shah's Heer.

Brick pillars marking each kos, about three kilometres, on the Mughal imperial road from Lahore to Delhi and beyond. Dozens still stand in the fields beside the highway.

A step-well built by Guru Amar Das with eighty-four steps down to the water, open to people of every caste.

The citadel of Lahore, rebuilt in brick by Akbar and enlarged by every ruler after him, Mughal and Sikh. With the Shalimar Gardens it became a World Heritage Site in 1981.

Built by Akbar to guard the Grand Trunk Road's crossing of the Indus. Ranjit Singh's army took it from the Afghans in 1813.

The Sikhs' holiest shrine, set in the middle of the pool of nectar and reached by a causeway, with four doors open to every direction and every caste. Destroyed by Abdali and rebuilt, then gilded and inlaid with marble under Ranjit Singh.

The gurdwara founded by Guru Arjan beside one of the largest sarovars of any Sikh shrine.

The throne of the Timeless, raised by Guru Hargobind facing the Harmandir Sahib, seat of the Panth's temporal authority. Ruined by Abdali, rebuilt, shelled by the army in 1984 and rebuilt again by the Sikhs themselves.

The tower and water tank that Jahangir built at his hunting ground for his favourite antelope, Mansraj.

The oldest dated Mughal mosque in Lahore, built for Jahangir's mother, its walls and domes covered with painted flowers, vases and lattices.

A walled inn on the imperial road, built in Nur Jahan's name, with carved sandstone gateways of elephants, horsemen and birds.

A wall some 1,450 feet long covered in tile pictures of elephant fights, polo, hunting, angels and dragons, made under Jahangir and Shah Jahan.

The emperor's tomb in a great walled garden across the Ravi, faced in red sandstone with marble inlay and four tall minarets.

Shah Jahan's palace of mirrors in the Lahore Fort, its vaults covered in thousands of pieces of convex mirror.

The most richly decorated Mughal mosque in the Punjab, covered inside and out in kashi kari tile work and painted plaster.

A Persian-style public bathhouse built by Wazir Khan inside the Delhi Gate of Lahore, with painted vaults over rooms for cold, warm and hot baths.

The tomb of the empress Nur Jahan, near her husband Jahangir's across the Ravi, once faced with marble and stone inlay that was stripped in later centuries.

Shah Jahan's terraced garden of pools and fountains, fed by a canal from the Ravi, a World Heritage site with the Lahore Fort.

The tomb of Nur Jahan's brother and Shah Jahan's father-in-law, next to Jahangir's. Its marble and tile were stripped in the Sikh period for buildings in Lahore and Amritsar.

The 'four towers', the tiled gateway of a vanished Mughal garden on the old road to Multan.

Aurangzeb's great mosque beside the Lahore Fort, for three centuries one of the largest mosques in the world.

The takht on the hill at Anandpur where Guru Gobind Singh created the Khalsa at Vaisakhi in 1699.

A square fort with forty great bastions rising out of the sand of the Cholistan desert, visible for miles.

Built where the younger Sahibzade and Mata Gujri were put to death in December 1704. The Shaheedi Jor Mela draws vast crowds here every December.

Where Guru Gobind Singh stayed in 1705–06 and prepared the final edition of the Guru Granth Sahib; recognised as the fifth Takht in 1966.

The 'golden mosque', raised above the Kashmiri Bazaar of the walled city on a platform of shops, with three gilded domes.

Built by the Bhangi misl and rebuilt by Ranjit Singh to guard Amritsar and its treasury; later a British and then an Indian Army fort, now open to visitors.

The fortified palace of the Phulkian Maharajas, begun by Baba Ala Singh, with painted halls and a Darbar Hall of chandeliers and arms.

A nine-storey octagonal tower, long the tallest building in Amritsar, raised in memory of Guru Hargobind's son Atal Rai, who died at the age of nine.

Ranjit Singh's summer palace and garden in Amritsar, laid out like a Mughal garden and named after Guru Ram Das.

The gurdwara around a rock that tradition says bears the print of Guru Nanak's hand, beside a spring below the hill of the Sufi Wali Qandhari.

The only Sikh-period haveli in Lahore that survives almost whole, with painted ceilings, carved jharokas and frescoes of Krishna and Sikh courtiers.

Where Guru Gobind Singh died in 1708. Maharaja Ranjit Singh paid for the building of the present gurdwara in the 1830s.

The Maharaja's memorial, holding urns with his ashes and those of four queens and seven maids who died on his pyre, built in a mix of Sikh, Hindu and Islamic forms.

The gurdwara on the site of the house where Guru Nanak was born in 1469, in the village of Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib.

The gurdwara beside the Lahore Fort at the place where Guru Arjan was martyred in 1606; Ranjit Singh's samadhi stands next to it.

An Italianate palace with a neoclassical front and Islamic domes, built for Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan IV of Bahawalpur.

The great museum of the Punjab, in a red-brick building on the Mall designed by Bhai Ram Singh, holding the Fasting Buddha, Gandharan sculpture, Sikh-period arms, coins and miniatures.

The college founded by the Singh Sabha reformers, with a vast domed building designed by Bhai Ram Singh, which became a centre of Sikh learning and Punjabi letters.

A palace modelled on Versailles, built for Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala to designs by a French architect.

The clock tower at the centre of Lyallpur, with eight bazaars running out from it in the pattern of the Union Jack: the market town of the Chenab canal colony.

The gurdwara on the Ravi where Guru Nanak spent his last eighteen years farming and singing, and where he died in 1539. Since 2019 pilgrims from India have crossed to it by a corridor without a visa.

A Hindu temple of Durga and Lakshmi-Narayan standing in a tank in Amritsar, built in the manner of the Harmandir Sahib with a gilded dome.

Built for the Maharaja of Kapurthala on the model of the great mosque of Marrakesh, for the Muslim subjects of a Sikh state.

A village mosque built over fifty years by a local landowner with craftsmen from across Pakistan, given the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1986.

The birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh in 1666. The old building fell in the earthquake of 1934 and was rebuilt in the 1950s.

One of the oldest forts in India still standing, where Razia Sultan, the first woman to rule from Delhi, was held prisoner in 1240.