India Gate

India Gate is a 42-metre triumphal-arch war memorial designed by Edwin Lutyens and built between 1921 and 1931 to commemorate the 84,000 soldiers of the British Indian Army who died in the First World War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The names of 13,300 of those soldiers are inscribed on the arch's surface; the rest were considered too numerous to list. Lutyens drew on the Arc de Triomphe and Roman triumphal arches but adapted the proportions to the Delhi heat and the Rajpath ceremonial axis along which it sits. The Amar Jawan Jyoti ('Flame of the Immortal Soldier') was added at the base in 1971 after the Bangladesh Liberation War — an eternal flame guarded round the clock by India's armed forces, which moved to the National War Memorial in 2022 (the canopy at India Gate now contains a holographic statue of Subhas Chandra Bose). The original cenotaph beneath the arch was empty. India Gate is the visual culmination of the Republic Day parade route every January 26. Evenings see Delhi families picnicking on the Rajpath lawns, ice-cream and chaat vendors lining up. The illuminated structure at night is the standard Delhi tourist photograph.