The Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative is an experiment in heritage and urban rejuvenation in the heart of New Delhi, which should make every Delhiite proud. The restoration of Humayun’s Tomb and its gardens, as well as the development of Sunder Nursery are well known, but few are aware of the urban rejuvenation in the Nizamuddin Basti that is being carried out without much fanfare by a team of dedicated young professionals led by Ratish Nanda. The basti is one of Delhi’s oldest settlements. It not only has an impressive collection of Indo-Islamic monuments dating back 700 years, but has also been a fountain of performing arts and host to a living culture of festivals and processions.

Read More: Life Under the Tombs

The World Heritage Week is on, so should there be celebrations or mourning? This depends on which side of the fence one is: the government and its influential circle will readily join the jamboree and celebrate, but the civil society, which has cried itself hoarse appealing to the government to try and salvage the neglected monuments in the state, will certainly see no reason for the celebrations. Take for instance the tallest heritage icon in the city, the Charminar. The state government has time and again claimed that the Charminar and its precincts would be conserved as a heritage area as the 412-year-old monument is a symbol of Hyderabad’s history, culture and architecture.

Read More: Time to Celebrate or Mourn?

The renovated Humayun’s Tomb was inaugurated recently in a high-profile function attended by the Prime Minister, the Aga Khan, Ratan Tata and chief minister Sheila Dikshit. Amid all the fanfare, it probably didn’t occur to anyone that another World Heritage Site, which had set out on the road to renovation around the same time as the Mughal emperor’s tomb, had fallen by the wayside . It’s the Red Fort, a symbol of Mughal pride and, perhaps, vainglory.

Read More: Patchy Repairs Mar Red Fort Restoration

Gunjan Kumar, 50, had been working with the aviation sector in Patna for the last three decades. For years, he has heard in Hindi movies about the “Maner laddoos”, the sweet delicacy made with pure ghee, and which gave the nondescript place like Maner the national fame. But he never got an opportunity to visit Maner Sharif, barely 35 km from Patna. This is the unexplored tourist spot in Maner where the then Mughal Governor of Bihar Ibrahim Khan built a mausoleum in memory of Sufi saint Makhdoom Shah Daulat in 1616. The mausoleum, one of the exemplary displays of grand style of Afghan and Mughal architecture, is known as Maner Sharif.

Read More: Monument Fails to Draw Visitors

At first sight, the kitchen equipment at Humayun’s Tomb belies the scale and complexity of the restoration of the Unesco World Heritage Site. But when you see the glory of the restored Mughal monument, which was thrown open to the public on September 18, you realise that a pateela, thaali, hamaam-dasta, sil-batta, chakki and dosa batter grinder can be used for purposes other than just culinary.

Read More: The Tomb Restorers

A team from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture engaged in conservation work at Sunder Nursery has stumbled upon a lotus pond there which dates back to the 16th century. Concealed by dirt, the pond was earlier believed to be a well. Once the layers of earth were carefully set aside, it was found to be just over a metre in depth. Its edge was crafted in the shape of eight petals,” said a senior Trust official.

Read More: 16th-Century Lotus Pond found in Sunder Nursery

The restored Humayun’s Tomb will be inaugurated by prime minister Manmohan Singh and the Aga Khan on Wednesday. The project, which began in 1997 and will continue at least until 2017, is the largest and most ambitious heritage conservation project undertaken in India, and the only one by a non-government body, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC).

Read More: Humayun’s Tomb Redone with Mughal Techniques

See also: After Humayun, Who? and 16th Century Tools Giving Facelift to Mughal Gateway

Finally, Humayun can sleep easy. The restoration work on the Mughal emperor’s tomb in Delhi ends next week. On the evening of 18 September, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, industrialist Ratan Tata and philanthropist Aga Khan will visit the 16th century monument to mark the completion of this ambitious undertaking. “It took us six years and 200,000 man-days of painstaking work by craftsmen,” says Ratish Nanda, project director of Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which is restoring the much larger Humayun Tomb complex, including the monuments in the neighbouring Sunder Nursery. The trust is also involved in the urban renewal of the historic Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti area.

Read More: After Humayun, Who?

Once upon a time, 300 Persian craftsmen travelled to India to build a tomb for the emperor Humayun. According to historians, the craftsmen were housed in a Serai adjoining this tomb — said to be the precursor to the Taj. Now known as Arab Serai, this historical gateway is set to be restored after decades of neglect and decay, thanks to the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

Read More: 16th Century Tools Giving Facelift to Mughal Gateway

Every Sunday, as the sixteenth-century Humayun’s Tomb girds up to receive thousands of noisy visitors, its contemporary, Sunderwala Burj, sleeps undisturbed behind the tall gates of Sunder Nursery just across the road. Few know the nursery as anything more than a seedbed for the trees and flowers in Lutyens’ Delhi, but that is set to change soon. Quietly, the sprawling property is being transformed into an authentic Mughal garden laid around a central axis with monuments, fountains, water bodies and a large variety of tree and bird species. The project’s landscape planner, Mohammed Shaheer, says the aim is to conserve the environment and create a “major landscaped space” aligning nature and utility in a garden.

Read More: Return of the Mughal

See also: Dreamers Work to Create Huge New Park in Delhi

In a tangle of forgotten, overgrown brush in the heart of India’s capital, a quiet plan has been hatched to change the landscape of one of the world’s most populous cities. An intricate Mughal garden is being created. Crumbling sandstone tombs nearly lost to history are being rebuilt. An artificial lake is being carved out. The renovation of Sunder Nursery is intended to serve as the catalyst for an even more ambitious project: the creation of a mammoth, iconic park that would rival New York’s Central Park as a refuge from urban chaos.

Read More: Dreamers Work to Create Huge New Park in Delhi

From the narrow lanes of Delhi’s impoverished Nizamuddin Basti area, it’s almost impossible to see the ”Lal Mahal”, or the Red Palace, which is one of India’s earliest Islamic royal dwellings. In many cities, endowed with a lesser bounty of historic buildings, the Lal Mahal may have become a tourist draw. It was constructed in the mid-13th century of red sandstone by one of Delhi’s first sultans, a slave dynasty of Turkic origin that brought Islam to the region.

Read More: In Delhi, Developers Imperil Islamic Palace

Intricate paintings done over 600 years ago inside the tomb of Sufi saint Syed Shaha Qhabululla Husayni, at the dargah of Sufi saint Khwaja Bandanawaz Geusdaraz, could soon be replaced with glasswork.

Read More: Historical Tomb Paintings Make Way for Glasswork

“For conservation to be successful in our country it is necessary that we return to a craft-based approach where master craftsmen are empowered to match the work of their forefathers using traditional materials, tools and building craft traditions,” said Aga Khan Trust for Culture project director Ratish Nanda, who has been associated with the restoration work of the two Mughal era garden tombs of Isa Khan Niyazi and Bu Halima over the past two years.

Read More: Mughal Era Tombs Restored to Their Traditional Grandeur

The much talked about restoration plan for the Qutb Shahi tombs seems to hang in balance. Hopes of the domed structures getting a new lease of life look remote, with the A.P. Wakf Tribunal staying the repair work. After years of dilly-dallying, the government signed an MoU on January 9th 2013 with the Agha Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), the world’s leading conservation body, for restoring the pristine glory of the royal necropolis. But within days of the inking of the agreement in the presence of Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, the whole plan has come unstuck. The AKTC, which is investing Rs. 100 crore to restore the tomb complex, is shocked at the stay on the repair work. “We have never faced such a situation anywhere in the world,” said Ritesh Nanda of the AKTC.

Read More: Doomed Domes

When Ratish Nanda, projects director of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, India, threw open the doors of the newly restored 16th century tomb of Isa Khan on World Heritage Day, visitors and guests took turns to marvel at the ornate ceiling and to applaud Nanda and his team for having restored it beautifully. Everyone except a lady in salwar kameez who seemed to have found the moment too overwhelming and started to cry quietly.

Read More: The Art of Restoration

See also: Heritage is an Educational Legacy

and: Isa Khan Tomb Reopens in New-Found Glory

Humayun’s Tomb made news in 2010 when US President Barack Obama and wife Michelle were photographed here, staring at the monument’s majestic elegance. On Thursday [Apirl 18th, 2013], the World Heritage Day, the Humayun’s Tomb complex will return to make news again to announce the unveiling of its most attractive structure, Isa Khan’s Tomb, after a two-year-long restoration. Isa Khan’s Tomb, part of UNESCO World Heritage Site of Humayun’s Tomb, has a dome that resembles a plump inverted flower. But time and state negligence had robbed this flower of its beauty and fragrance. A 27-month-long conservation drive has attempted to infuse that lost beauty back into the tomb.

Read More: Isa Khan Tomb Reopens in New-Found Glory

See also: Isa Khan Tomb to Reopen

Starting Thursday [April 18th, 2013], World Heritage Day, 16th century tomb-gardens of Isa Khan Niyazi and Bu Halima — an integral part of World Heritage Site of Humayun’s Tomb — will be thrown open for visitors after undergoing conservation and restoration. “Chandresh Kumari Katoch, the union minister for culture, will formally reopen the enclosed garden-tombs on Thursday,” said Daljeet Singh, ASI’s Delhi chief.

Read More: Isa Khan Tomb to Reopen

The Charminar is bleeding and no one is bothered. Away from the awestruck tourists and prying eyes of heritage activists is an ancient mosque on the top story of the iconic structure which narrates tales of monumental neglect of its own custodian, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The flooring of the 422-year old mosque has developed cracks and has three craters. To make matters worse, some of these eyesores are spread over several feet and are several inches deep on the clear span (the space between two piers that lead to an arch), under many arches on the west side of the structure.

Read More: Charminar

The 16th-century Jahaz Mahal, so named for its ship-like reflection on the adjacent lake, might get a new lease of life. Indian National Trust for Art, Culture and Heritage Delhi Chapter has moved a proposal with Archaeological Survey of India to restore the missing portions of the monument, including a chhatri and the south wall. ASI, however, is yet to approve the proposal as its policy does not support restoration on the principle that relics should, as far as possible, be retained as they are.

Read More: Lodhi Relic in Restoration Row

Restoration of the two 16th-century garden tombs in vicinity of Humayun’s Tomb and part of the world heritage site belonging to Sher Shah Suri’s courtier Isa Khan Niazi and Bu Halima, a lesser-known historical figure close to the Mughal royal family, is almost complete. Isa Khan’s Tomb, where conservation work began in January 2011, will be reopened to the public on April 18th 2013, World Heritage Day.

Read More: Isa Khan’s Tomb to Reopen after Two Years