Ahmedabad

Ahmedabad is India's first UNESCO World Heritage City — a designation given in 2017 for an old city that preserves the most intact example of medieval Indian urban planning remaining in the country.

The pol neighbourhoods — residential clusters organised by caste and community behind defensible gateways, with shared wells and shrines and the interlocking balconies of carved wooden havelis — are the architectural record of how a prosperous medieval Indian city organised its domestic life. The Sidi Saiyyed Mosque, built in 1573, contains a stone jali — a perforated screen carved in the pattern of an interlacing tree of life — that has been called the finest stone carving in Gujarat and is reproduced as the logo of Ahmedabad's IIM campus.

Gandhi Ashram at Sabarmati, established in 1917 on the banks of the river, is the most important site of India's independence movement: the place from which Gandhi launched the Dandi Salt March in 1930 and where he lived for thirteen years developing the philosophy of satyagraha. The ashram is a working memorial rather than a closed museum: the spinning wheel that Gandhi used, the prayer grounds, the correspondence room where he wrote thousands of letters — presented with a directness that the site's extraordinary historical importance does not allow to become sentimental.

Places to Visit in Ahmedabad

• Adalaj Stepwell
• Sabarmati Ashram
• Jama Masjid, Ahmedabad
• Old City heritage walk

Things to Do in Ahmedabad

• Heritage walking tour of the old city
• Stepwell visit
• Gandhi Ashram tour