Lal Kot
Qila Rai Pithora
The first Delhi — a Rajput citadel in the rocky south, whose walls every later conqueror walked through.
The Tomar king Anangpal II raised a walled citadel on the Mehrauli ridge around the middle of the eleventh century, on ground chosen for stone, water and height. A century later the Chauhans extended it with a second ring of ramparts and it took the name of its last Hindu ruler, Prithviraj — Qila Rai Pithora. It is the oldest of Delhi's cities, and the only one built before the Sultanate.
It fell in 1192, and what happened next set the pattern for the next eight hundred years: the conquerors did not raze it, they built inside it. The Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque and the Qutub Minar stand within Lal Kot's walls, raised partly from the stone of what was already there. The ramparts themselves survive as long grassy embankments through the scrub of Mehrauli, unmarked and easy to walk over without noticing.
Long stretches of rubble rampart in the Mehrauli archaeological area, and the Qutub complex standing inside them.