Jama Masjid, Delhi

Where it sits. The Masjid-i-Jahan-Numa — the mosque with a view of the world, universally called the Jama Masjid — stands on Bhojla Pahari, a rocky knoll that Shah Jahan's engineers chose precisely because it lifted the building above the roofline of his new capital. It is about 500 metres south-west of the Red Fort, at the end of a short axis that once ran straight from the fort's Delhi Gate. Three flights of red sandstone steps climb to its three gateways; the eastern flight, the widest, was the royal approach and is now the one lined with vendors, pigeon-feed sellers and the bicycle rickshaws that work Meena Bazaar below.

The story behind it. Construction ran from 1644 to 1656 under Shah Jahan, using a workforce conventionally numbered at five thousand and a budget of about a million rupees of the day. The emperor invited Syed Abdul Ghafoor Shah Bukhari from Bukhara to lead the first prayers, and the office of Shahi Imam has descended in that family since. Until 1857 it functioned as the imperial mosque of the Mughals. After the revolt the British occupied it, quartered troops inside, and seriously discussed demolishing it as a punitive measure; it was returned to the Muslim community in the early 1860s under conditions. It remains a working congregational mosque rather than a museum piece, which shapes everything about a visit.

What the building actually is. The plan is a vast open rectangle: a courtyard of roughly 100 by 90 metres with an ablution tank at its centre, held by arcaded cloisters and closed on the west by the prayer hall. That hall carries eleven arches, the central one taller and framed by a rectangular pishtaq, above which three bulbous marble domes are banded in black stripes — a device Shah Jahan's architects used to keep a very wide facade legible from a distance. Two minarets of alternating red sandstone and white marble rise about 40 metres at the corners; the southern one can be climbed by a tight internal stair of some 120 steps, and the view from the top is the best available reading of Old Delhi's roof plan. A small room off the north gate holds relics venerated by the community, among them a Quran said to be written on deerskin.

On screen. The mosque is one of the most-filmed silhouettes in Hindi cinema, usually as the establishing image that says this is the old city — a flight of pigeons off the courtyard, the domes behind. It appears in Delhi-6 (2009), where the mohalla's life is organised around it, though Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra shot most of that film on a replica set at Sambhar in Rajasthan and used the real precinct sparingly. Sequences for Kurbaan and Sultan were also filmed in the Jama Masjid area, and the surrounding lanes turn up in Fukrey and Delhi Belly. Filming here is negotiated with the mosque's own management committee rather than only with the Archaeological Survey of India, which is why productions tend to work the steps and the bazaar outside rather than the courtyard itself.

What you actually see today. Entry is free; a camera charge is collected at the gate, and shoes are left at the threshold for a small fee. Visitors are asked to dress with shoulders and legs covered, and gowns are lent at the entrance. The courtyard empties and fills five times a day, and the mosque closes to sightseers during each prayer and for roughly forty-five minutes around Friday midday, when the congregation can run into tens of thousands. Below the eastern steps, Meena Bazaar sells caps, prayer beads, perfume oils and dried fruit. Behind the southern side, Gali Kababian holds Karim's, trading since 1913, and the surrounding lanes of Matia Mahal cook nihari, korma and seekh kebabs from before dawn during Ramadan.

Getting there and timing. Jama Masjid metro station on the Violet Line is a five-minute walk; Chawri Bazaar on the Yellow Line is a slightly longer approach through the paper market. Late afternoon is the best light — the western wall glows and the marble picks up warmth — and the hour before sunset, when the courtyard fills quietly, is the most rewarding time to sit on the steps. The building is not step-free: every approach involves a substantial flight, and the courtyard sandstone is hot enough in summer to make crossing it barefoot genuinely painful, so a mid-morning or evening visit between October and March is the sensible plan.