IN
What to see in Delhi on foot
35 sights worth the detour, all walkable, all offline.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Delhi offline.
Delhi is a city made for walking. This self-guided guide maps 35 of its sights worth the detour — landmarks, historic sites, museums and galleries and parks and gardens — the places locals point to and the tour buses skip, close enough to string into a single day on foot. Download the Delhi pack in Voyage GO before you go and the whole route works offline: no roaming, no dead battery from a live map. Every monument, viewpoint and park you pass quietly fills your travel passport.
Landmarks6
- 1Lotus TempleTwenty-seven marble petals, grouped in threes, fold into a single hall where any person of any faith walks in without condition.
- 2India GateAround 13,300 names carved in stone — soldiers lost across Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and the Afghan frontier.
- 3AkshardhamA 43-metre temple built without a single steel beam — pink sandstone and marble held together by ancient Shilpa shastra rules alone.
- 4Jawaharlal Nehru StadiumThe stage for India's 1982 Asian Games opening ceremony, now a $210-million oval that doubles as a 100,000-person concert bowl.
- 5Kartavya PathThe road Britain built to crown an empire — now where India parades its Republic every 26 January.
- 6Parliament HouseIndia's legislature moved into a brand-new building in May 2023 — and the Lutyens-Baker sandstone original from 1927 still stands right next door.
Historic Sites24
- 7Red FortThe ramparts where Jawaharlal Nehru raised India's flag on 15 August 1947 still host that ceremony every Independence Day.
- 8Qutb MinarSuccessive dynasties handed this tower off across 170 years — Aibak started it in 1199, Firuz Shah Tughlaq capped it with a cupola in 1368.
- 9Humayun's TombThe red-sandstone ancestor of the Taj Mahal — commissioned by an empress, designed by Persian architects, and finished a century before Agra.
- 10Jama MasjidShah Jahan built his imperial mosque at the highest point of Shahjahanabad — the Mughal capital — and it was regarded as a symbolic gesture of Mughal power across India.
- 11Rashtrapati BhavanThe world's largest official residence by floor area — outranking even Brunei's Istana Nurul Iman — stands at the end of Rajpath.
- 12Iron Pillar of DelhiA 7.21-metre iron column forged around 375–415 CE that has never rusted — and one that archaeologists and materials scientists have long worked to explain.
- 13Qutb ComplexTwo dynasties and three rulers started, extended, and finished the same victory tower over more than a century — and left the receipts in stone.
- 14Tomb of Safdar JangA prime minister buried himself like an emperor — and the Mughal court was too weak to stop him.
- 15Delhi CantonmentA 10,452-acre British-era military zone that still runs as its own city — one of only three local governing bodies in the entire National Capital Territory.
- 16Raj Ghat Memorial ComplexA black marble platform on the Yamuna's bank marks the exact spot where Gandhi was cremated on 31 January 1948 — the eternal flame at its end has burned ever since.
- 17Gandhi SmritiThe patch of ground where Gandhi was shot on 30 January 1948 is still there to stand on.
- 18Old Parliament House (Constitution House)For 73 years India's democracy ran from a circle Lutyens drew to fit a triangular plot.
- 19Gurudwara Bangla SahibThe eighth Sikh Guru spent his final weeks here distributing every offering to Delhi's sick poor — then died in this bungalow in 1664.
- 20Laxminarayan Temple (Birla Mandir)Gandhi inaugurated this temple and personally ensured it was open to every caste — a meaningful act at the time of its completion.
- 21Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque)Aurangzeb built this private prayer room inside Red Fort so he need not leave for midday prayers — British soldiers later stripped its gilded copper domes and sold them at auction, and the marble you see on the domes today is a colonial replacement, not what Aurangzeb commissioned in 1663.
- 22Jantar MantarThirteen stone instruments built in 1724 to track the Sun, Moon, and planets — no telescope, just the naked eye.
- 23Purana Qila (Old Fort)Two emperors built the same fort — one lost it just before the walls were finished.
- 24Kashmiri GateIn 1857, Indian soldiers fired cannonballs from this arch at British troops — the northern gateway to a Mughal capital turned battleground.
- 25Fatehpuri MasjidA Mughal empress built it in 1650; the British sold it at auction for Rs. 19,000 after 1857 — and it's still standing at the end of Chandni Chowk.
- 26Alai DarwazaIndia's first true dome rises here — built in 1311 when a sultan imported Islamic construction methods to the subcontinent for the first time.
- 27Hazrat Nizamuddin DargahQawwali singers fill a marble courtyard built around the tomb of a 14th-century Sufi saint, drawing pilgrims and devotees every week.
- 28Tihar JailNine prisons, 400 acres, and an inmate-run radio station — India's largest prison complex is also one of its more unusual rehabilitation experiments.
- 29Sacred Heart CathedralA 1930 colonial commission where Italian church design quietly planted itself in central Delhi.
- 30Secretariat Building (North & South Block)Stand on Rajpath and only the tip of Rashtrapati Bhavan's dome clears the hill — Herbert Baker won an architects' war and the sight line never recovered.
Museums & Galleries4
- 31National Museum, New Delhi200,000 objects, 5,000 years — and it started with a single exhibition in London that Nehru refused to ship back.
- 32National Museum of Natural HistoryIndia's national nature museum opened on World Environment Day 1978 — then a fire in 2016 destroyed the building and its entire collection.
- 33National Gandhi MuseumThe shawl Gandhi wore when he was shot is here — and so is the bullet.
- 34National Gallery of Modern Art, DelhiOver 17,000 works under one roof at Jaipur House — India's visual story from 1857 onward, in one of the world's largest modern art museums.
Parks & Gardens1
- 35Lodi GardensFifteenth-century royal tombs scattered across 90 acres where Delhiites do their morning walk.
