Tughlaqabad Fort

Tughlaqabad Fort is Delhi's most dramatic ruin — a colossal 14th-century fortress-city whose battered, sloping stone ramparts sprawl across a rocky ridge in the south of the capital.

• Built between 1321 and 1325 by Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, founder of the Tughlaq dynasty, it was conceived as a mighty fortified capital, and even in ruin its scale is astonishing: kilometres of thick rubble walls, bastions and gateways enclosing a honeycomb of collapsed palaces, halls and stepped tanks.
• The fort's architecture is unmistakably Tughlaq — massive, austere and military, with high walls that batter inward as they rise, sloping like the sides of a pyramid, punctuated by rounded bastions.
• You can walk the ramparts and climb to high points for sweeping views over the surrounding scrub and the Aravalli ridge.
• Across the road, linked by a now-severed causeway, stands the fortified tomb of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq himself, a red-sandstone-and-marble mausoleum inside its own little bastioned enclosure.
• The site is wrapped in one of Delhi's most famous legends — the curse of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, said to have doomed the fort to lie 'inhabited only by shepherds' — and its lonely, half-wild ruins do carry an eerie grandeur.
• For vegetarian travellers it is best to plan food around the visit: options at the fort are minimal, so carry water and snacks, and head to the pure-veg and veg-friendly restaurants of Saket, Kalkaji or Nehru Place afterwards.
• Wear sturdy shoes and a hat — the ground is rocky, uneven and exposed.