A Walk Around Lodi Garden

Lodi Garden, once called Bagh-i-Jud, was the royal burial ground for the Sayyid and Lodi rulers of Delhi. Located on Lodi Road between Safdurjung’s Tomb and Khan Market in south Delhi, the garden covers an area of approximately 90 acres, dotted with beautiful monuments and tombs. With its undulating walking paths and jogging tracks fringed with ancient trees, colourful shrubs and fl owering plants, the garden is an amalgamation of a historic past encompassed within today’s Delhi. The garden, as we see it now, in its avatar as a landscaped park, was designed in 1936 as a setting for the group of buildings belonging to the Sayyid, Lodi, and Mughal dynasties. These tombs, mosques, and other structures stood in what was then called the village of Khairpur, on the outskirts of New Delhi. In 1936, a garden was laid out with native and exotic trees and plants around these monuments. It was named Lady Willingdon Park, after the wife of the then British Viceroy. Post-Independence, it was more appropriately renamed Lodi Garden when it was redesigned in 1968 by J.A. Stein, an eminent architect, who is also associated with many other buildings around the Lodi Garden Complex