Agrasen ki Baoli

The baoli is sixty metres long and fifteen wide, three storeys of arcaded walls stepping down to a well shaft at the far end. Tradition credits its founding to the legendary king Agrasen; the masonry that stands is Tughlaq work of the fourteenth century, probably a rebuilding of something older. A stepwell of this kind was infrastructure, shelter and social space at once — water storage that people could walk into, and shade to sit in through a Delhi summer.

What makes it extraordinary now is its context. It sits on Hailey Road, a few minutes from Connaught Place, hemmed in on all sides by glass and concrete, so you turn a corner off a commercial street and find the ground opening downward. The acoustics change as you descend, the traffic thins to nothing, and the temperature drops several degrees. The well itself is dry and railed off, and pigeons and bats have the lower arcades.