Lahore Fort (Shahi Qila)ਲਾਹੌਰ ਕਿਲ੍ਹਾ (ਸ਼ਾਹੀ ਕਿਲ੍ਹਾ)

What is Lahore Fort, the Shahi Qila?

Lahore Fort, the Shahi Qila or Royal Fort, is the great citadel at the northern end of Lahore's Walled City in Pakistani Punjab. Spread over more than 20 hectares, it holds 21 notable monuments inside a bastioned wall: marble palaces, mosques, audience halls and gardens built mainly by the Mughal emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan, and later used as the Lahore residence of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In 1981 UNESCO inscribed it, together with the Shalimar Gardens, as a World Heritage Site, calling its monuments an outstanding repertoire of Mughal art at the empire's zenith.

A fortress older than the Mughals

People have lived on this high ground by the Ravi for millennia, and the first fort recorded here was an 11th-century mud fort from the days of Mahmud of Ghazni. The Mongols destroyed it in 1241; Sultan Balban rebuilt it in 1267; Timur's armies destroyed it again in 1398, and it was rebuilt once more in 1421, passing through Lodi hands until Babur took Lahore in 1526. The depth of the site showed itself in 1959, when excavators in front of the Diwan-i-Aam found a gold coin of Mahmud Ghaznavi dated 1025 CE, 25 feet below the lawn, in cultural layers that ran unbroken for 15 feet.

Akbar lays the present fort

The fort seen today begins in 1566, when Akbar made Lahore his frontier capital against Kabul, Multan and Kashmir and replaced the mud walls with solid brick masonry. His builders raised palaces and gardens inside, including the Daulat Khana audience complex and the Jharoka-e-Darshan, and carved elephant-shaped brackets that show Hindu craftsmen shaping early Mughal architecture. Jahangir added the Kala Burj pavilion, whose ceiling carries European-inspired angels, and ordered the fort's greatest artwork: the Picture Wall, a glowing skin of glazed tile, faience mosaic and fresco on the northern and western walls, 1,450 feet long and 50 feet high, its 116 panels showing elephant fights, polo, angels and court life. It was in this fort, too, that Guru Arjan Dev Ji was imprisoned in 1606 before his martyrdom in Lahore.

Shah Jahan's marble court and the Alamgiri Gate

Shah Jahan worked on the fort from his coronation in 1628 to 1645, rebuilding the Diwan-i-Aam as a forty-pillared audience hall and completing the Shah Burj quadrangle in white marble. Its two jewels face each other: the Sheesh Mahal of 1631 to 1632, a palace chamber glittering with mirror work, and the Naulakha Pavilion of 1633, named for the 900,000 rupees it cost, its curved Bengali-style roof inlaid once with precious stones. The Moti Masjid, the Pearl Mosque, also belongs to his reign. His son Aurangzeb added the fort's most famous silhouette, the Alamgiri Gate, whose twin rounded bastions open towards the Badshahi Mosque across the Hazuri Bagh; the gate became so emblematic of Lahore that it once appeared on Pakistani currency.

The Sikh century at the fort

As Mughal power faded, the fort passed to Afghan and Maratha hands before the Bhangi Misl, one of the twelve Sikh misls, ruled Lahore from it between 1765 and 1799. Maharaja Ranjit Singh took the city in 1799 and made the fort his residence, living in its summer palace. His court laid out the Hazuri Bagh and its baradari to celebrate the arrival of the Koh-i-Noor, turned the Moti Masjid for a time into a gurdwara called Moti Mandir, and added the Ath Dara and Sehdari pavilions. The fort is also a family house in Sikh memory: Maharaja Duleep Singh was born in its Mai Jindan Haveli in 1838. The Diwan-i-Aam was lost in 1841, bombarded when Sher Singh fought Chand Kaur for the throne, and after 1849 the British turned palaces into barracks and hospitals.

Visiting Lahore Fort

The fort forms a rough parallelogram about 365 by 320 metres, divided between the public southern half of audience halls and gardens and the private northern courts reached by the elephant gate. Most visitors enter through the Alamgiri Gate from the Hazuri Bagh, with the Badshahi Mosque and the Samadhi of Ranjit Singh completing one of the world's great historical squares. Give the fort half a day: the Picture Wall alone, under conservation by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Walled City of Lahore Authority since 2015, rewards an hour. Pair it with the Shalimar Gardens across the city for the full story of Mughal Lahore.