New Delhi will finally unlock more of its past. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has taken a solid step by getting in-principle approval from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts to convert the restored Lahori Gate Haveli, built in 1929, into the Shahjahanabad Interpretation Centre and museum. The site lies in Khari Baoli, in a square where lanes spill out from spice bazaars, bustling markets, and the old Delhi Railway Station. The plan includes exhibitions on the history of Shahjahanabad, craft displays, digital archives, and storytelling about food, trades, and daily life.
Delhi’s heritage landscape has many haveli bones, but what sets this project apart is its earnest restoration, added amenities like proper lighting, climate control, narrative panels, and future amenities like a museum shop and cafeteria. What this tells us is that Delhi might be turning a page, from forgetting its palaces to showcasing them. This blog explores what this museum project means in practice, what challenges lie ahead, and what lessons other cities—like Ahmedabad—provide for heritage preservation.
Bringing Shahjahanabad Back: Practical Scope and Challenges
The Lahori Gate Haveli project is substantial in both ambition and scale. Funds amounting to Rs 4.22 crores have been allocated, with around Rs 3.38 crores coming from the Union Ministry of Culture. That money will go into structural repairs, internal civil work, lighting, air conditioning, and setting up exhibits—digital archives, narrative panels, galleries that track Delhi’s evolution—together with installations like models of old town plans and digital reconstructions of structures such as the clock tower. IGNCA will curate the exhibits. The plan also includes a cafeteria and ticketed entry.
All components suggest this museum won’t simply be a preserved shell, but a lively centre.
But there are hurdles. First, the legal and administrative pendulum swings slowly. Though the building was restored structurally, it lay unused for years; encroachments, roof decay, damaged jharokhas, and delayed agency appointments have stalled progress. MCD must finalize its deal with IGNCA. The standing committee nod is still awaited. Second, curatorial excellence requires more than galleries. Artefact acquisition, sourcing authentic objects and photographs, balancing narrative, ensuring maintenance, operating staff—not to mention ongoing funding—are all non-trivial. And third, sustainability: will visitor numbers justify costs? Will the museum be accessible, both physically and financially? If pricing, location, visitor amenities (café, guide services) are done well, this could become a tourist magnet; if not, it may become yet another locked haveli.
What Delhi Can Learn from Ahmedabad—and Vice Versa
Delhi’s past often involves demolition. Early in the 20th century, much of Shahjahanabad’s built environment was levelled: palaces dismantled, walls pulled down to make way for imperial boulevards, grand museums, New Delhi’s rise. The Lahori Gate museum is an intentional counterweight to that history of erasure. Ahmedabad, by contrast, has long preserved its old city’s fabric: its pol-style houses, step-wells, traditional lanes, gates and walls still intact in many places. It uses a graded heritage system—Grade 2A, 2B, 3 etc.—for structures, marking them with plaques that indicate heritage status, survey numbers, and wards. That system sensitizes residents, officials, tourists; it helps in legal protection, funding and maintenance priorities.
In Ahmedabad, even modest private houses get plaques; being heritage-tagged means restoration incentives, conservation oversight, public recognition. Could Shahjahanabad adopt something similar? The Lahori Gate project raises hopes. If MCD and IGNCA work with heritage bodies to define grades for Shahjahanabad’s surviving havelis, mantles of recognition can protect more than just famous mansions. This helps in prioritizing restoration, routing tourism, preserving crafts, and binding legal protections. Delhi already has so many heritage assets—if it pairs public will with legal mechanisms, administrative efficiency, and public awareness, then the Lahori Gate project could shift Delhi from reactive restoration to proactive preservation.
Ahmedabad’s model shows that heritage preservation is not just about restoring monuments; it is about fostering pride, maintaining continuity in the urban fabric, and giving structure to what counts as heritage. It shows that when heritage status is visible—plaques, grades, protection law—it changes how people behave around old buildings. That could help ensure that Shahjahanabad’s lanes, bazaars, jharokhas, and memories are seen as assets.
Conclusion: From a Haveli to A Heritage Narrative
The conversion of Lahori Gate Haveli into a museum and interpretation centre is refreshing precisely because it combines institution, architecture and narrative. It promises to do more than freeze a building; it intends to animate stories of trade, food, crafts, and community. But for that promise to deliver, restoration must be matched by ongoing management, legal protections, community involvement, affordability, good curatorship and visitor amenities.
Delhi’s old city has always lived in paradox—historic yet neglected, treasured yet threatened. With this project, and by learning from cities like Ahmedabad that have protected their old homes through graded heritage, the capital has a chance to recalibrate. The museum at Lahori Gate is more than a fixed site. It could become a map of identity, a lesson in resilience, and a signal of what Delhi values when it looks into its past—and what it decides to carry forward.