New Delhi in a day: forts and markets

The Qutub Minar, the highest minaret in India at over eight hundred years old, towers over a complex that also houses remains of the first mosque built by Delhi's sultans, with Quranic inscriptions carved along its entire shaft.

The Humayun's Tomb, a marble and sandstone funerary garden built in the sixteenth century, anticipates in its proportions and dome the Taj Mahal, constructed nearly a century later by descendants of the same Mughal emperor.

At Chandni Chowk, the city's oldest market, extremely narrow alleys open onto shops dealing in spices, fabrics, and sweets right next to the Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque.

The India Gate, a memorial arch dedicated to Indian soldiers who died in the First World War, closes the day on the city's most orderly and monumental side, with the long grassy Rajpath avenue stretching toward the presidential palace.

Between Qutub Minar and Chandni Chowk, eight hundred years of history pass, yet both remain part of the same living city, not museum artifacts.

It's this coexistence between eras, more than any single monument, that's the reason a single day in Delhi always leaves the feeling of having seen too little.