The land of five waters gave the world its first cities, its saints and its songs. Broken by every empire that crossed it, it is still ours to remember, and to make whole again.

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PUNJAB WIKIਪੰਜਾਬپنجابMuseum
Punjab WikiMuseumModern art & architecture
The Capitol Complex, Chandigarh
UnpetitproleX · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia
Modern art & architecture

The Capitol Complex, Chandigarh

Le Corbusier's government buildings for the new capital of Indian Punjab, built after Lahore was lost in 1947.

When Partition left East Punjab without a capital, Nehru commissioned a new city. Le Corbusier designed its Capitol Complex: the High Court, the Secretariat and the Legislative Assembly in raw concrete, with the Open Hand monument standing among them.

The complex became a World Heritage Site in 2016 as part of Le Corbusier's architectural work.

More modern art & architecture

Nek Chand's Rock Garden
Nek Chand's Rock Gardenfrom 1957

Thousands of figures made from rubble and broken china by a road inspector, built in secret on government land and opened to the public in 1976.

Minar-e-Pakistan
Minar-e-Pakistan1960 – 1968

The tower in Lahore that marks where the Lahore Resolution was passed in 1940.

Amrita Sher-Gil, Three Girls
Amrita Sher-Gil, Three Girls1935

Three young women in red, green and ochre, sitting in silent expectation: the painting that won Sher-Gil the Bombay Art Society's gold medal.

The paintings of Abdur Rahman Chughtai
The paintings of Abdur Rahman Chughtai1920s – 1970s

Lahore's great painter, who drew on Mughal and Persian miniature to make a style of his own.

Virasat-e-Khalsa, Anandpur
Virasat-e-Khalsa, AnandpurOpened 2011

A museum of Sikh history and Punjabi culture designed by Moshe Safdie, its curving roofs set across a lake below the Keshgarh hill.

Alhamra Arts Council, Lahore
Alhamra Arts Council, Lahore1970s – 1992

Lahore's arts centre on the Mall, designed by Nayyar Ali Dada in red brick, with rounded halls that echo the city's Mughal past.

Bhakra Dam
Bhakra Dam1948 – 1963

The concrete dam across the Sutlej in the Shivalik hills, 226 metres high, whose water and power made the Green Revolution possible. Nehru called such projects the new temples of India.

The Partition Museum, Amritsar
The Partition Museum, AmritsarOpened 2017

A museum in Amritsar's old Town Hall that tells the story of 1947 through the voices, letters and belongings of the people who lived through it.

The Jallianwala Bagh memorial
The Jallianwala Bagh memorial1961

The flame-shaped red sandstone memorial designed by the American architect Benjamin Polk, opened in 1961 in the garden where Dyer's troops fired on the crowd in 1919.

Satish Gujral's Partition paintings
Satish Gujral's Partition paintings1950s

Born in Jhelum in 1925 and deaf from childhood, Gujral painted the grief of the refugees in a series on Partition, before turning to murals, sculpture and architecture.

National College of Arts, Lahore
National College of Arts, Lahore1875

Founded as the Mayo School of Art, with John Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard's father, as its first principal; he also ran the Lahore Museum next door. It trained generations of the craftsmen and artists of the Punjab.

Government College, Lahore
Government College, Lahore1864

One of the oldest colleges of the Punjab, its Gothic tower a Lahore landmark. Muhammad Iqbal studied and taught there, and so did the Nobel physicist Abdus Salam.

The Wagah–Attari border gates
The Wagah–Attari border gates1947; ceremony since 1959

The road crossing between the two Punjabs, where soldiers of both countries have lowered their flags together every evening since 1959, in a ceremony of stamping and glaring watched by crowds on both sides.

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