THE OLD CITY

The old city of Hyderabad was a fortified city built by the Sultan of Qutab Shahi in 1591, then fortified in 1712 by Mubariz Khan who had walls erected to protect it from invasion. Nowadays, only a few ruins remain of these walls...

Without pretension, the old city remains in the mind not as a memory of monuments and ancient sites, but of quite simple things: the bustle of Mir Alam's mandi, where fresh vegetables have been sold for years; the surma man of Gulzar Hauz, who will apply different kinds of kohl to your eyes, depending on the ailment for which you have come; the smoky interiors of Ramaiah Gowli's little stalls where you buy milk and puddings the equivalent of which you cannot find anywhere; the busy men in the tiny stores on Falaknama Road, flattening small pieces of muzak for the neighborhood; the door-to-door bakeries selling freshly baked naan and kulcha ; and the great flights of pigeons, circling over the gray domes and minarets of the Supreme Court.

Today the old city is packed with people and traffic. The main street is Patthargatti - a street, a town, or both? It's hard to say, but it gets its name from the stone buildings lined up on either side of the road. The street is famous for its bead stores. There are dozens of them offering an infinite variety of pearls - cultured or artificial, white or colored, etc. But the old town is also a fantastic bazaar with many goods. Generations of Hyderabadis, visitors and tourists have come here in search of silks and saris, brocades, perfumes, jewelry, velvet, tobacco, hats, and handmade slippers. And they were served by the descendants of the families who ran these businesses generation after generation. Thus, the ties between the merchants and their customers are very old. Only small sections of the old wall remain today. The rising waters of the Musi River in 1908 caused the first major damage to the wall. What remained along the city gates was later demolished to improve traffic flow. However, two of the historic gates still survive, one at Dabirpura and the other at Purana Pul. Both are worth seeing, if only for the memory of the good old days!