Lucknow is one of India's fastest-growing cities, combining grace with pace and tradition with modernity. There is an important State museum, open every day except Monday, from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm and located in a modern three-storey building at Banarasibagh, with displays of bronzes, coins, textiles and decorative arts including sculpture and paintings, a department of natural history and one of anthropology.
Amongst the sculptures are the earliest known image of Balarama and a Panchmukhi Shivalinga, whilst the Tabla and the Sitar are both instruments that were first heard on the streets of Lucknow. Tourism is popular in Lucknow.
The city and surrounding areas are packed with excellent monuments and buildings of architectural importance including the tallest clock-tower in India and Lucknow is also home to the Hussainabad, or Chota Imambada, which is an exquisite building built by Nawab Muhammad Ali Shah in 1839 as a mausoleum for himself.
The Bada Imambada or Asafi Imambada was built by the Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula in 1784 to combat a famine. Apart from the interior galleries there is no wood used anywhere. The vaulted hall, measuring almost 50 meters in length, just over 16 meters in breadth and is, at just over 15 meters high, said to be amongst the largest spaces of its kind in the world. At the exterior, a staircase leads to a ‘bhoolbhulaiyan’ or labyrinth.
Most visitors are only allowed inside with a guide as it is very easy to get lost. Many guides give a visitor 15 minutes to find the way out and very few succeed, having to be shown out by the guide! To help keep Lucknow’s tourism safe, some large underground passages have now been blocked up and a row of cloisters conceals a huge well, said to be bottomless, next to a majestic mosque.
Lucknow boasts many parks and gardens and a population that has the sense to enjoy these green spaces rather then getting swept up into the rush that symbolizes most modern cities. Tourism in Lucknow is leisurely and there is plenty of natural beauty to enjoy. If you are keen to visit a zoo whilst in India there is one in Lucknow, although perhaps it is a shame to visit a caged tiger when the opportunity exists to try and spot one in a nearby National Park… |
