Welcome
to
Lahore

The people of Lahore, when they want to emphasize the uniqueness of their town say "Lahore is Lahore". The traditional capital of  Punjab for a thousand years, it had been the cultural center of Northern India extending from Peshawar to New Delhi. This preeminent position it holds in Pakistan as well.  Lahore is the city of poets,  artists and the centre of film industry. It has the largest number of educational institutions in the country and some of the finest gardens in the continent.
Lahore is considered to be the cultural capital of Pakistan.Despite its ancient roots, the golden age of Lahore was during the Mughal period of rule, and today the city contains some of the finest examples of Mughal architecture in South Asia.
Badshahi Mosque is Lahore's most striking building built by Emperor Aurangzeb. Between the Badshahi Mosque and the main entrance to Lahore Fort is a small garden, Hazuri Bagh. In the south west corner of the garden stands the mausoleum of Allama Iqbal (Pakistan's greatest poet and expounder of the 'two-nation theory' that led to the creation of muslims homeland in South Asia).
Happily, this was an exaggeration and today the great buildings laid down by the long-vanished Mughal emperors may be seen in much of their original splendour. All the adverse influences since then seem to have been washed away, like sediment carried off by a flood, leaving behind the fundamental character and beauty of this old Islamic settlement. Fittingly, it was here in I940 that the Muslim League made its first formal demand for the establishment of a Muslim homeland. A towering and graceful monument, the Minar-e-Pakistan now stands of the site of the passing of the Pakistan Resolution.
There is an ancient Punjabi adage,
       "One who hasn't seen Lahore,
            hasn't been born!"

  Lahore is "Queen of cities"; others are "like
       a golden ring, she the diamond."
  Lahore can be viewed from different aspects.
Throughout its turbulent histroy Lahore has been seen by many important writers historians and travellers as it changed from time to time. Miltor the great English poet placed Lahore among the cities which met the eyes of the repentant Adam the hill of Paradise:-

"______From the destined walls
Of combala, seat of cathian can,
And Samarchand by ox us, Temir's throne
To paquin of Sinaeantings; and thence
To Agra and Lahore of Great Mogul_____
To seat of mightiest Empires"
                                          (Paradise Lost BK-386-392).

Copy Rights by Farah Siddique. Last modified on July 2000.