Delhi is not one city but many, layered over each other across three millennia. Starting from Indraprastha, the legendary capital of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata, near the site of today's Purana Qila. Through centuries, rulers kept founding new capitals on this strategic plain between the Aravallis and the Yamuna river: the Tomars and Chauhans of Lal Kot and Qila Rai Pithora then the Delhi Sultanate and Lodi dynasties. Alauddin Khalji built Siri, and the Tughlaqs raised the fortress cities of Tughlaqabad, Jahanpanah and Ferozabad.
With the Mughals came Humayun's Tomb and Shah Jahan's Shahjahanabad, whose Red Fort, Jama Masjid and Chandni Chowk remain the living heart of Old Delhi. As Mughal power waned, the Marathas rose to influence over the city in the 18th century, before the British East India Company took control in 1803. After 1911, the British moved its capital to Delhi from Calcutta. Edwin Lutyens designed the stately avenues and monuments of New Delhi, inaugurated in 1931.
At independence in 1947, the city became the capital of the Republic of India, with each earlier Delhi still standing beside it. This souvenir invites you to carry home memories of that unbroken, many-chaptered story of Delhi!
