Pakistan's cultural capital — Mughal monuments, Anarkali bazaar, and the most exuberant street food culture in South Asia
Lahore is Pakistan's cultural, artistic, and culinary capital — the seat of the Mughal Empire's most creative period (Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan all built here), with the Lahore Fort, Badshahi Mosque, and Shalimar Gardens forming an extraordinary architectural legacy within the walled old city. Pakistani street food finds its peak expression in Lahore: the Gawalmandi Food Street, the Anarkali Bazaar breakfast circuit (nihari slow-braised beef shank, paya trotters soup, halwa puri deep-fried bread with sweet semolina), the Walled City's late-night karahi alley restaurants, and a biryani t…
Lahore has been a major center of power for over a thousand years — capital of the Ghaznavid Empire under Mahmud of Ghazni (11th century), the Mughal Empire's cultural capital under Akbar and Jahangir (16th–17th century, when the Lahore Fort and Shalimar Gardens were built), and capital of the Sikh Empire under Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1799–1849, during which the Koh-i-Noor diamond was part of Lahore's treasury). British colonial rule from 1849 added Lahore's distinctive red-brick Gothic railway station, Lawrence Garden, and the National College of Arts. The 1947 Partition left Lahore on the Pa…