Lahore City Tour 2026: Walled City, Lahore Fort and Wagah Border

There was a fort here before the Mughals, but the one you walk through was rebuilt by Akbar from the 1560s and filled with palaces by Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb added the Alamgiri Gate, the main entrance today, facing the Badshahi Mosque. Inside are the Diwan-e-Aam, where the emperor gave public audience, the Naulakha pavilion and the Moti Masjid. UNESCO listed the fort, together with the Shalimar Gardens, as a World Heritage Site in 1981.

The outer north and west walls carry the Picture Wall, hundreds of metres of tile and fresco panels of elephants, polo players and court scenes from the reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Most visitors walk past them on the way in; ask the driver to drop you on the Picture Wall side first.

The fort opens at 8 am and closes half an hour before sunset. Tickets are PKR 100 for Pakistanis, PKR 30 for students and PKR 1,000 for foreigners, bought at the gate.

The Sheesh Mahal, the palace of mirrors, was built for Shah Jahan in the 1630s in the north-west corner of the fort. Its walls and ceilings are covered in tiny pieces of convex mirror set into white plaster, so that one candle once lit the whole room. It is the part of the fort people photograph most, and the best reason to go inside early before the groups.

Aurangzeb built the Badshahi Mosque in 1671 to 1673, and for more than three centuries it was the largest mosque in the world. Its red sandstone courtyard is said to hold around 100,000 people at Eid. The three marble domes and four tall minarets face the fort across the Hazuri Bagh garden, where the poet Allama Iqbal is buried beside the mosque steps and the samadhi of Maharaja Ranjit Singh stands just behind.

Dress modestly, with a scarf for women, and leave your shoes at the gate. Avoid Friday prayer time, and remember that the stone gets very hot underfoot on summer afternoons.

Wazir Khan, Shah Jahan's governor of Lahore, built this mosque inside the Walled City in the 1630s and early 1640s. It is smaller than the Badshahi but far richer inside: almost every surface is covered in glazed kashi tiles and painted fresco, with calligraphy over the arches. The square in front, Wazir Khan Chowk, was cleared and restored by the Walled City authority with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and is one of the best places to sit in old Lahore.

Delhi Gate, on the east side of the old city, is where the road from Delhi entered Lahore, and where the Walled City walk begins. A few steps inside is the Shahi Hammam, the bathhouse Wazir Khan built in 1635. It was restored over several years in the 2010s, and its domes are now among the best-preserved Mughal frescoes anywhere.

From here the Royal Trail, the Shahi Guzargah, runs through Kashmiri Bazaar and past the gilded domes of the Sunehri Masjid to the fort, the route the emperors took into Lahore.

Fort Road Food Street runs below the Badshahi Mosque, and the rooftop restaurants in its restored houses look straight at the minarets. Come after dark, when the mosque is lit, for karahi, tikka and naan. It is the usual end to a full day tour, and it is busy, so we book a table on weekends.

Minar-e-Pakistan stands in Greater Iqbal Park, across the road from the fort, on the ground where the Lahore Resolution calling for Pakistan was passed on 23 March 1940. The tower, about 70 m tall, was finished in 1968. It is best seen in the evening, lit up, on the way back from Wagah.

Shah Jahan laid out the Shalimar Gardens in 1641 and 1642, east of the old city off the GT Road. Three terraces step down past long water channels, marble pavilions and hundreds of fountains. They are at their best in the cool months, early in the morning, and on the same World Heritage listing as the fort. The Walled City authority now also opens them in the evening.

Across the Ravi in Shahdara, Shah Jahan built a tomb for his father Jahangir, finished in 1637. It is a long, low building of red sandstone with white marble inlay and a minaret at each corner, in a walled garden. Nur Jahan, Jahangir's wife, and her brother Asif Khan are buried close by. It is far quieter than the fort.

The Lahore Museum on The Mall, in its red brick building from the 1890s, has the best Gandhara collection in the country, including the Fasting Buddha from Sikri, as well as Mughal miniatures and coins. The big bronze cannon outside is the Zamzama, Kipling's Kim's gun. Allow an hour and a half.