Hauz Khas Village: Delhi's Heritage Art District

Hauz Khas Village is South Delhi's most atmospheric heritage-and-creative neighbourhood, a medieval tank complex and palace that has been surrounded over the past two decades by galleries, design studios, restaurants, and boutiques occupying the village's traditional architecture in one of Delhi's most successful examples of heritage adaptive reuse. The medieval tank (hauz) from which the neighbourhood takes its name was commissioned by Sultan Alauddin Khilji in the 14th century to supply water to his new city, and the surrounding complex of madrasa buildings, a mosque, and the sultan's own tomb form one of Delhi's most beautiful and least crowded heritage sites. The ruins overlook a large green water body that provides an extraordinary backdrop for the restaurants and bars lining the perimeter of the village.

The restaurant, bar, and gallery scene of Hauz Khas Village was the defining creative neighbourhood of Delhi's mid-2000s development, establishing a template of heritage building adaptive reuse that has since been replicated throughout South Delhi's creative pockets. The best restaurants and bars in the village occupy multi-floor spaces in traditional buildings with terraces overlooking the medieval tank — the experience of having dinner with a 14th-century madrasa as the view is one of Delhi's most distinctive. The neighbourhood's gallery concentration makes it important for Delhi's contemporary art scene, with spaces showing work of national and international significance.

The residential character of the original village coexisting with the commercial development gives Hauz Khas a layered quality missing from purely commercial destinations. The narrow lanes behind the main commercial streets contain small temples, traditional sweet shops, and the ordinary commerce of a neighbourhood that existed centuries before the medieval tank complex was built. The Hauz Khas Metro Station on the Yellow Line provides direct access from New Delhi Station in under 20 minutes, and the deer park adjacent to the complex provides one of Delhi's most unusual juxtapositions — medieval ruins and grazing deer on the edge of a South Delhi neighbourhood whose main boulevard is lined with upscale restaurants and bars.