Lodhi Garden turns 90
Lodhi Garden — the 90‑acre Delhi park opened on April 9, 1936 as Lady Willingdon Park — celebrated its 90th anniversary this week, reminding the city that heritage tombs and daily public life still coexist in the same green space ( ). The park’s blend of Sayyid and Lodi dynasty monuments, birdlife, and fitness culture underlines why Delhi’s best heritage spots function as everyday urban amenities, not just museum pieces ( ).
A Delhi park that opened under the British Raj in 1936 is still packed at dawn in 2026, and the people jogging past its domes are moving through a 15th-century graveyard without leaving the jogging track. Lodhi Garden turned 90 this week on April 9, ninety years after it opened as Lady Willingdon Park. (hindustantimes.com) The park covers about 90 acres in central New Delhi, between Khan Market and Safdarjung’s Tomb, which is why it works like a city shortcut and a city refuge at the same time. Its lawns and paths were laid out for public use, but the stone buildings inside it are much older than the park around them. (tribuneindia.com) Those buildings come from the Sayyid and Lodi dynasties of the late Delhi Sultanate, which ruled parts of north India before the Mughals. Lodhi Garden preserves one of the few everyday public spaces in Delhi where that period’s architecture still sits in plain sight instead of behind a ticket counter. (wikipedia.org) The best-known structures are Muhammad Shah’s tomb, Sikandar Lodi’s tomb, Shisha Gumbad, and Bara Gumbad. Together they turn an ordinary morning walk into a route past royal burials, a mosque, and one of Delhi’s most recognizable domes. (wikipedia.org) Bara Gumbad looks like a tomb, but historians generally describe it as a monumental gateway linked to the mosque beside it rather than a grave itself. That detail explains why the garden feels less like one cemetery and more like a small stone city dropped into a public park. (wikipedia.org) After Indian independence, Lady Willingdon Park was renamed Lodhi Garden, and architect Joseph Allen Stein redesigned parts of the landscape in 1968. The result is the version Delhi knows now: broad lawns, curving paths, and old monuments framed like part of daily life rather than fenced-off relics. (artsandculture.google.com) That mix is why the place holds together so well in public memory. A birder can spot species in the same grounds where a history student studies Sultanate architecture, and both are sharing the same patch of grass with runners finishing a 5 a.m. lap. (tribuneindia.com) Recent bird walks in the garden recorded 27 species in a single session, including Yellow-footed Green Pigeon and Red-naped Ibis, which is a reminder that this is not just a monument cluster with landscaping around it. It is functioning as urban habitat inside one of the world’s most crowded capitals. (ataavi.org) The monuments inside the garden are also still under active care, not just passive admiration. A recent report said the Archaeological Survey of India was preparing restoration work on Shish Gumbad, one of the protected structures inside the park. (hindustantimes.com) That is what the 90th anniversary really showed: Delhi’s most durable heritage spaces survive when they double as useful public spaces. Lodhi Garden lasts because people do not visit it only to remember the 1400s or the 1930s; they visit it to walk, stretch, flirt, birdwatch, pray quietly, and then come back the next morning. (indianexpress.com)
