Rumi Darwaza
Interesting facts
- A lantern was once placed in the octagonal pavilion crowning the gate so that the Rumi Darwaza glowed above the city at night.
- Jets of water once sprang from carved flower buds set along the sides of the arch, adding a fountain to the gateway.
- Crushed shells and mother-of-pearl from lake beds were mixed into the stucco to give the brick surface a sheen like marble.
- Its builder Asaf-ud-Daula was the fourth Nawab of Awadh and reigned from 1775 until 1797.
- Internal staircases lead up through the structure to the domed pavilion at its summit.
- A painting made in 1814 to 1815, now in the British Library, records how the gate looked in the early 19th century.
Why it is worth it
The Rumi Darwaza rises about 18 metres over the road in old Lucknow, a single colossal arch topped by a half-dome, its brick surfaces worked with intricate floral ornament. It is the most recognisable image of the city and a showpiece of the Awadhi style that flourished under the Nawabs of Awadh in the late 18th century.
Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula built the gate in 1784, the same year his great Bara Imambara next door was completed. That project had begun in 1780, a famine year, and was meant in part to give work to the people of the region. The gate's name means "Turkish Gate": Rum was the old Islamic name for Anatolia and the lands of the former Eastern Roman Empire, and the design is said to have been inspired by the Sublime Porte, the gateway to the Ottoman government in Istanbul. Unlike Mughal monuments faced with stone, the Rumi Darwaza is made of thin fired bricks known as lakhori, bound with surkhi, a lime mortar mixed with crushed brick. Above the great arch, the half-dome rests on a half-octagonal plan, giving the gate its unusual profile when seen from the side.
The gate once marked the entrance to the old city, and later led to a palace that the British demolished after the uprising of 1857. It stands between the Bara Imambara and the Chota Imambara, so a walk along this road passes the main monuments of Nawabi Lucknow in sequence. Lucknow itself, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, grew into a centre of courtly culture under the Nawabs, after Asaf-ud-Daula moved his court here from Faizabad in 1775; he and his successors filled the city with imambaras, mosques, palaces and gates. In 2019 the Rumi Darwaza appeared on an Indian postage stamp in a series devoted to historic gates.
Getting there
The gate is in the old quarter of Lucknow, about 4 km from the city centre. The nearest airport is Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport (LKO), about 12 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Rumi Darwaza, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, is a gateway which was built by Nawab Asaf-Ud-Daula in 1784. It is an example of Awadhi architecture. The Rumi Darwaza is sixty feet tall and was modeled after the Sublime Porte in Istanbul.
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