Gallery
Description
Property Name: Fort and Shalimar Gardens
Inventory No: 92-42-1
Date of infill of the inventory form: 2007-11-06
Country (State party): Pakistan
Province: Lahore
Town:
Geographic coordinates: 31° 35′ 25″ N
74° 18′ 35″ E
Historic Period: Mughal
Year of Construction: 15th to 16th century
Style: Mughal
Original Use: Garden
Current Use: Garden
Architect: Unknown
Significance
Lahore Fort is the only monument in Pakistan that has witnessed all the stages of Mughal architecture. The Shalamar Gardens represent the Mughal conception of a perfect garden.
Selection Criteria
i. to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius
ii. to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design
iii. to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared
State of Preservation
Six conservation projects are underway in the Lahore Fort and four in the Shalamar Gardens.
Staffing and Training Needs.
The Fort contains the offices of the Northern Circle of Archaeology including curatorial staff, conservation cell, central archaeological laboratory, tile and mosaic laboratory, antiquity trade control branch, library and garden section. Shalamar Gardens has a Project Director/Senior Architect, archaeological conservator, garden staff, clerks and attendants. Staffing levels are viewed as inadequate and the Dept. is seeking to obtain more staff.
Training needs are identified in the fields of curatorship, and conservation of wood, brick, stone, marble and frescoes, chemical treatment, hydraulics and landscaping for conservators.
Assuming its present configuration during the 11th century, the Fort was destroyed and rebuilt several times by the early Mughals during the 13th to the 15th centuries. The 21 monuments which survive within its boundaries comprise an outstanding repertory of the forms of Mughal architecture from the reign of Akbar (1542-1605).
In 1981 the Shalamar Gardens were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
References
Khan, Ahmad Nabi. Monuments of Islamic civilization in Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Rabat: ISESCO, 2000.
Mumtaz, Kamil Khan. Architecture in Pakistan. London: Concept Media Ltd.; North America: Butterworth Architecture.
Samina Quraeshi. Lahore The City Within. Concept Media 1988
Unesco Website: http://whc.unesco.org