Lahore Audio Tours

Lahore was the Mughal Empire's second city and its cultural soul. The emperors who made it -- Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb -- left behind a collection of monuments that is simply staggering to walk through. The Lahore Fort and Shalimar Gardens are jointly listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the Badshahi Mosque, completed in 1673 under Aurangzeb's orders, was for a century the largest mosque in the world. The Walled City still has gates bearing the names of Mughal nobles, and the Anarkali Bazaar -- named for a court dancer allegedly entombed alive by Emperor Akbar -- is reputedly the oldest bazaar on the subcontinent still in operation. Rudyard Kipling set the novel Kim here, which is the kind of literary endorsement that sticks.

The food of Lahore is Punjabi cooking at its most uncompromising: nihari (spiced stew slow-cooked through the night), seekh kebabs from the coal fires of Food Street on Fort Road, and paya (braised trotters) eaten at breakfast from restaurants that open at dawn specifically for this purpose.

Lahore operates with the confidence of a city that was magnificent before most European capitals were planned -- and knows it.