Best Places To Visit In Lucknow: Lucknow is known to be the City of Nawabs and it is surely influenced by the culture & traditions of the Nawab rule. During my visit to this city, particularly to explore the essence of the city’s famous places, I happened to visit some of the monuments in Lucknow which are visited by a number of people. You may read about my visit to Bara Imambara here.
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Lucknow is the capital city of Uttar Pradesh and one of the most populated and developed cities of the state. With the advent of a number educational institutes in the city and the construction of residential apartments all over the city, it surely looks more sophisticated and developed now.
Coming to my visit to the famous monuments in Lucknow, I happened to visit Asafi Mosque & Shahi Baoli recently. These two architectural buildings are located in the same campus as the Bada Imambara. The purpose of the construction of these monuments was to provide employment to the local people when a famine stuck the state and people were dying due to lack of food
Entry ticket:
INR 25-50 for all the monuments in the Bara Imambara complex.
How to reach:
Auto-rickshaws & cabs take you directly in front of the Bara Imambara monument and from there you can easily see both of these monuments yourself.
Asafi Mosque
This Mosque was built to offer prayers and hold religious gatherings during the pious festivals of Eid & Ramzaan. As one enters the first giant gate of the Bara Imambara complex, there is this Asafi Mosque located at the right hand side of the central garden.
The stairs leading to the huge mosque look great from a distance. Women of any caste or religion including Muslims are not allowed inside the mosque. Men are equally allowed inside the mosque premises irrespective of caste or religion.
I visited the place in monsoons when there was a sudden rainfall, still managed to capture some images of the Asafi Mosque. The architectural style is the usual style of dome-shaped Gumbad and four-pillared structures.
Shahi Baoli
The guide we had hired told us that this was the first monument that was built in the whole complex as water was the prime necessity for the construction of any monument. So a well was constructed which was linked underground with Gomti river to serve as a perennial source of water for the uninterrupted construction.
The Shahi Baoli was not a simple well but was a uniquely designed structured building which also served as a guest house for the visitors during the rule of Nawab Asaf-Ud-Daula.
We were told that the Shahi Baoli monument had multi storeys which happened to fall during one of the earthquakes in the city and a major portion of the constructed building fell of in the well due to which the well is dry now. It is believed that the upper storey of the building which was destroyed has been restored by the Archeological Survey of India and is not the original one.
The several arches, columns and halls make it a unique monument of the time and surely makes it a must see place in Lucknow! The guide will tell you a lot about the history about these monuments and the famous stories related to it!
Well, I totally enjoyed being there and would surely visit it again in a more favorable time of year!
