Hauz Khas Complex

Where it sits. Hauz Khas Complex occupies the western edge of a lake in South Delhi, about ten kilometres south of Connaught Place and a short walk from the Green Park and Hauz Khas Metro stations. The medieval buildings stand on a low terrace above the water; behind them, a warren of converted village houses climbs uphill into Hauz Khas Village; south of the water lies the Deer Park, and beyond that the tomb-studded lawns that connect towards Siri Fort. Few places in Delhi compress a fourteenth-century seminary, a reservoir, a boutique quarter and a rooftop bar scene into four hundred metres.

The story behind it. The lake came first. Alauddin Khalji, who ruled from 1296 to 1316, had a large tank excavated to supply Siri, the second of Delhi's medieval cities; it was known as the Hauz-i-Alai, the royal tank. Two generations later Firuz Shah Tughlaq, whose reign ran from 1351 to 1388, had the silted reservoir cleared and built along its southern and eastern banks the L-shaped madrasa that dominates the site — one of the most important centres of Islamic learning in the fourteenth-century world, drawing students from as far as Central Asia. Firuz Shah's own tomb sits at the pivot of the L, a square chamber under a plastered dome with a stone railing on the roof and incised medallions on the interior. Around it are six chhatris, a small mosque, and cells whose arcades still frame the water.

What you actually see today. The complex is entered free of charge through a gate at the end of the Village lane, and the transition is abrupt: cafés and clothing shops give way in ten metres to a lawn of tombs and a colonnaded walk overlooking the lake. The madrasa runs about 76 metres along the eastern arm and 138 metres along the southern, in two storeys where the ground drops away, so from the water the building reads as a cliff of arches. The lake itself is a modern rescue: it had dried out by the 1990s, and since the mid-2000s it has been kept full with treated water piped from a nearby sewage plant, which brought back cormorants, egrets and a resident population of turtles. Peacocks and nilgai wander the adjoining Deer Park. Late afternoon is when the site works best, because the sun sets straight down the axis of the water and the arcades fill with silhouettes.

On screen. Imtiaz Ali's Rockstar (2011) filmed here, using the ruins and lakeside walk for the scenes where Janardhan and Heer drink together for the first time and draw up their list of misbehaviours, and parts of the song Tum Ho were shot on the same ground. The choice was not accidental: the complex is one of the very few Delhi monuments where a small crew can work in daylight without shutting down a neighbourhood, and it has consequently become a default location for independent Hindi features, music videos and web series that want the city's medieval texture without a fortress-scale permit. The wider Hauz Khas Village, with its stacked bars and graffiti staircases, does the opposite job in the same films — it is the shorthand for young, moneyed South Delhi.

How the village happened. Until the 1980s Hauz Khas was an ordinary urban village of Jat farming families whose land had been absorbed by the expanding city. Designers began renting the houses as studios and boutiques from the middle of that decade, galleries followed, and by the 2000s the upper floors had turned into restaurants and bars trading on the ruin view. The result is genuinely unusual: a protected medieval monument with a nightlife district grafted directly onto it, and a lane where a fourteenth-century tomb sits between a vintage-clothing shop and a stairwell to a rooftop.

Getting there and timing. Hauz Khas station on the Yellow and Magenta lines is about a kilometre from the gate; Green Park on the Yellow Line is a similar distance and an easier walk. The monument grounds keep daylight hours and close around sunset, while the village stays busy until late. October to March is the comfortable season. Parking in the village is difficult enough that a Metro arrival is usually faster. The lawns and lakeside path are level, but the madrasa's upper storey and the tomb are reached by steps, and the village lanes are narrow, steep in places and often crowded after dark.