18-08-2018
Wazir Khan's Baradari is one of the finest and largest of the genre, and is in well preserved state. It is perched between the Punjab Public Library (PPL), National College of Arts (NCA) and the Lahore Museum and is approached from the Punjab Public Library Road. It has been put to good use as a reading room for the adjoining library and is therefore considered a part of the library.
The building is named after its founder Hakim Ilmuddin titled Wazir Khan, the same grandee of Shah Jahan's court who gifted the city of Lahore with such sumptuous monuments as Wazir Khan's Mosque and Wazir Khan's Hammam, also known as Shahi Hammam, in the Walled City.
The chronicles record how Wazir Khan, after having completed his spectacular mosque, turned his attention to laying out a fine garden—a garden which became known as Wazir Khan's Nakhlia Garden because of the large number of date-palm trees. In the middle of the Nakhlia Garden he built an elegant baradari, which has carried his name to this day.
The baradari (lit. twelve openings) was so titled because of a sehdara centre and flanking deeply-inset arched openings or peshtaq on each side of the square, resulting in 12 dars or doorways openings. The two storey pavilion-like structure is dominated by four corner belvedere towers, terminated by sloping chajjas (eaves) and capped by cupolas. It is surrounded by pools on all four sides containing fountains which would have provided misty breeze to its occupants in the hot Lahori summers.
The baradari (lit. twelve openings) was so titled because of a sehdara centre and flanking deeply-inset arched openings or peshtaq on each side of the square, resulting in 12 dars or doorways openings. The two storey pavilion-like structure is dominated by four corner belvedere towers, terminated by sloping chajjas (eaves) and capped by cupolas. It is surrounded by pools on all four sides containing fountains which would have provided misty breeze to its occupants in the hot Lahori summers.
As in the case of Anarkali's tomb, this monument also has undergone extensive alterations having served varied functions: as part of Sikh and British cantonments, as the Settlement and Telegraph office, and also as a museum. Its use as Punjab Public Library, was lauded by Latif: "A nobler aim it could not have served. The founder of the building was himself a patron of learning and a profound scholar, and the association of his name with an institution pregnant with such significant results for the rising generation of the Punjab may be regarded as a happy coincidence."
