Delhi’s ‘lost’ Mughal garden reopens
Some of the ancient tombs it contains have been given Unesco World Heritage status
Aonce-forgotten Mughal garden in the heart of New Delhi reopened yesterday after years of painstaking conservation work, creating a new public park in India’s smog-choked capital.
The 90-acre (36-hectare) garden was to be formally opened by the Aga Khan, whose Trust for Culture has helped recreate the classical garden and restore its crumbling 16th-century monuments. Some of the ancient tombs it contains were close to ruin before conservation efforts began around a decade ago, but have now been given Unesco World Heritage status.
The park is part of the historic complex that surrounds Humayun’s Tomb, the recently restored grave of a Mughal emperor that is widely seen as the inspiration for Taj Mahal.
Known as the Sunder Nursery, it was used in the early 20th century to propagate trees and flowers for the grand new city built when India’s British rulers moved the capital to Delhi from Kolkata.
It remained in use as a government nursery, but the gardens themselves had become subsumed by jungle.
When the Aga Khan Trust for Culture first opened offices, they had to contend with cobras nesting in the half-ruined buildings, said general manager Luis Monral. Over the last decade, hundreds of truckloads of construction rubble were removed and 20,000 saplings planted on the site.