Lahore
— — the city the Mughals built and never left.
Not only on a wall.
“Lahore holds the Punjab the way few cities hold a region. Inside the old Walled City, the lanes still run between haveli courtyards and food streets that don't quiet until late. To the west, the red sandstone of the Badshahi Mosque faces the bastions of Lahore Fort across the Hazuri Bagh. South, the long arc of the Mall carries Kipling's old newspaper office and the Lahore Museum his father once ran. The city smells of woodsmoke and orange jasmine through the cool months.
Lahore, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Lahore is the capital of Punjab and the second-largest city in Pakistan, with a metropolitan population above thirteen million. It sits on the eastern bank of the Ravi River, about thirty kilometres from the Indian border at Wagah. The city was the Mughal capital under Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the walled old city still keeps that footprint. Allama Iqbal International Airport lies east of the centre; the long colonial spine of the Mall runs roughly southeast through the British-era civic district.
The Lahore Fort and the Shalimar Gardens were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. The fort holds the white-marble Sheesh Mahal of Shah Jahan, its ceilings inlaid with thousands of mirror fragments, and the Naulakha Pavilion's pietra dura. Across the Hazuri Bagh, the Badshahi Mosque was completed in 1673 under Aurangzeb; for over three centuries it was the largest mosque in the world, its courtyard sized for some hundred thousand worshippers. The whole ensemble is red Sikri sandstone and white marble against the Punjab sky.
Lahore has a hot semi-arid climate. The pleasant season runs from November through March, with cool dry days and chilly mornings; April brings heat that builds through June, when daytime highs regularly clear 40 °C, and July through September is monsoon. The Walled City is best walked in the late afternoon, when the food street at Fort Road and the lanes around Wazir Khan Mosque come alive. Lahore Fort and Badshahi Mosque sit side by side and are usually visited together in a single morning.