New Delhi (India)
Words alone cannot can adequately describe a traveller’s first experience of the sights, sounds and sheer scale and energy of the great city that is New Delhi, the second most populated city on the planet with 22 million inhabitants. Although Delhi only formally became the centre of administration in December 1911, it has long been an influential economic and political centre during both ancient times and more recently and notably during the years of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857.

For the student of architecture there are many fine buildings in the classic early twentieth century British style, but there are also earlier buildings that should be on a visitor’s itinerary such as the twelfth century ruins Qutub Minar, originally an early Islamic site and the sixteenth century Humyan’s Tomb, the first garden-tomb on the Indian sub-continent and inspiration for the Taj Mahal.