India · Delhi

Delhi: the metropolis of seven cities

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  • Population:32M metro
  • Timezone:IST (UTC+5:30)
  • IATA:DEL
  • Currency:Indian rupee (INR, ₹). ATMs are everywhere, cards work in hotels, malls and mid-range restaurants upward, and QR-code payment is ubiquitous among locals. Carry cash for market vendors, rickshaws and small restaurants, and keep small notes — breaking a large one in a market is a recurring nuisance.
  • Key Areas:Old Delhi (Shahjahanabad) — the Mughal city and its lanes · Nizamuddin — the dargah, the basti and Humayun's Tomb · South Delhi — Hauz Khas, Safdarjung, the southern tombs · Mehrauli and Qutub — the oldest layer, in the far south

Overview

Delhi has been destroyed and rebuilt seven times, and the current city sits on top of all of them — Mughal Shahjahanabad, Sultanate ruins in the southern suburbs, and a modern metropolis of some 32 million threaded together by one of the world's better metros.

History

Delhi's site has been settled for millennia, and its formal history is usually told as seven successive cities: Lal Kot and Mehrauli in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Siri under the Khaljis, then Tughlaqabad, Firozabad, Dinpanah, and finally Shahjahanabad — the Mughal capital begun in 1639, whose Red Fort and Jama Masjid still stand. Each was built near rather than on its predecessor, which is why the ruins of all of them survive across the modern city instead of underneath it. The British moved their capital here from Calcutta in 1911 and built a planned city alongside the old one; independence was declared from the Red Fort's ramparts in 1947, and Partition brought a large influx of Punjabi Hindu and Sikh families whose arrival reshaped the city's demography, its commerce and its cooking.

Culture

Delhi's food identity is Punjabi-Mughlai and it is specific: the tandoor-based North Indian restaurant canon was codified here after Partition, and butter chicken and dal makhani were invented in a Daryaganj kitchen in the 1950s. The old city holds the century-old Mughlai institutions and the paratha lane; south Delhi holds the modern reinvention. Street food peaks with chole bhature in the morning, chaat through the day, and the winter-only milk-foam sweet daulat ki chaat in December and January. Festivals: Diwali (October or November): the city lights up with diyas and fireworks, and the old-city markets are at their most atmospheric, Holi (March): most vivid in residential colonies; many hotels run their own rooftop celebrations for guests, Eid-ul-Fitr: morning prayers at the Jama Masjid draw enormous crowds, and the surrounding lanes fill with festival sweets, Winter arts season (roughly December to March): the city's museums, galleries and performance venues run their heaviest programme in the comfortable months. Museums: Crafts Museum — a living-craft complex with artisans working in weaving, pottery and metal from across the country, Sanskriti Kendra and the private museums of south Delhi — textiles, terracotta and everyday objects, Sulabh International Museum of Toilets — genuinely serious social history behind an unlikely name.

Practical Info

Safety: Ordinary big-city precautions apply in crowded markets and interchanges — keep phones and wallets secured in Chandni Chowk and around the main stations, and use ride-hailing or prepaid stands after dark. The more significant health factor is air quality in the late-autumn-to-winter window, when pollution can reach levels that affect healthy visitors: check a live reading, carry a well-fitted mask, and reduce strenuous outdoor activity on bad days. The unified emergency number is 112. Language: Hindi is the language of daily life and English is the working language of government, business and tourism; signage, metro announcements and official communication are bilingual. English is effectively universal in service contexts in the southern and central city, and vendors in the old city will switch on request. Currency: Indian rupee (INR, ₹). ATMs are everywhere, cards work in hotels, malls and mid-range restaurants upward, and QR-code payment is ubiquitous among locals. Carry cash for market vendors, rickshaws and small restaurants, and keep small notes — breaking a large one in a market is a recurring nuisance.

Travel

Delhi is not one city but several stacked on the same ground, and the single most useful decision a visitor makes is to read it by layer rather than by list. The Mughals built Shahjahanabad — today's Old Delhi — around the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, and its lanes still work the way a seventeenth-century commercial city worked. Earlier Delhis lie to the south, where a twelfth-century victory tower and the ruins of the first Islamic capital sit among suburban housing, and where medieval tombs appear between apartment blocks as ordinary furniture of the neighbourhood. Later still, the British laid a planned capital of avenues and roundabouts across the middle of it, which is a distinct enough entity to be its own destination. What ties the layers together is the metro, which is genuinely good and makes a city of this size navigable in a way its traffic does not. The practical consequence for a trip: group your days by layer and by geography — one for the old city, one for the southern monuments, one for the planned capital — rather than chasing a highlight list across the map. Delhi rewards that discipline with a concentration of architecture, food and living history that nowhere else in India matches.

Old Delhi is where the city's Mughal layer is densest. Chandni Chowk, the avenue laid out in the mid-seventeenth century by Shah Jahan's daughter, remains one of Asia's most concentrated commercial streets — cycle rickshaws, wholesale markets, silver dealers, spice traders and food stalls operating in buildings whose structure has not fundamentally changed since. The Red Fort anchors its eastern end: Shah Jahan's sandstone-and-marble palace complex, with the public and private audience halls and the marble pavilions of the Rang Mahal along the eastern wall. Opposite, the Jama Masjid is the country's largest mosque, and the climb up its southern minaret gives the best view over the old city's rooftops. The lanes are the real subject, though. Paranthe Wali Gali has fried stuffed parathas since the 1870s; Khari Baoli is Asia's largest wholesale spice market and the turmeric aisle alone justifies the detour; Dariba Kalan handles silver and jewellery. Navigate by cycle rickshaw rather than on foot or by car — the drivers know the lanes, and nothing else fits through them.

Frequently asked questions

Three at a minimum, and they group naturally by layer: one for Old Delhi and the Red Fort, one for Humayun's Tomb and the Nizamuddin quarter with a museum or the Lodhi-era tombs, and one for the Qutub complex and the southern monuments. A fourth day buys the food properly and the smaller sites — the stepwell, Safdarjung, a market morning — which are what people end up remembering. The planned capital district is a further half-day and has its own guide.

Visaja keeps this page's contact details and visa guidance under continuous review — still, requirements can change at short notice, so confirm the essentials with the mission or the official government portal before you travel.