Portal:India:Sculpture

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.

Indian Monuments

Intach to revive Lodi-era tomb

Richi Verma The Times of India Dec 02 2014

GAUTAM NAGAR MONUMENT EATEN INTO, USED FOR PARKING

Nestled between two residential buildings in south Delhi's Gautam Nagar, a Lodi-era monument has served as a makeshift parking lot, dumping ground and haunt for stray dogs for decades. Ornamental designs are still visible on the exterior façade, but new buildings have hemmed in the structure completely . Portions of the tomb's parapet walls seem to have been taken over by one of the adjoining buildings. To salvage Delhi's vanishing heritage, the monument is going to be conserved for the first time by Intach Delhi in collaboration with the department of archaeology .

Under Intach's built heritage listing, the tomb has been graded `A' in terms of archaeological significance.Located opposite the main road of the colony , the tomb is surrounded by residential buildings but the ones next to the monument have literally eaten into it. “The building has never been conserved and its history is unknown.However, it has striking Lodi architecture features placing it somewhere around 14th or 15th century . The neighbouring building on the right side has taken over some portions of the parapet wall,“ said an official.

Officials said that fortunately no portions of the monument have been demolished. However, inspection of the right side of the structure has not been done so far due to the new building eating into it.

“Inside the monument, the façade is cracking and damaged at several points. We removed the malba that was dumped here. Conservation includes a chemical cleanup by art conservators and restoring old plaster to assess how much of the original surface still exists.This work began in late November and we expect to complete it in two months,“ added officials.

Local residents have been using the front portion of the tomb for parking.Officials said that this will have to be discouraged once the conservation work is completed. “We cannot allow encroachments or parking misuse around the structure. Local residents, who have been using the tomb and its surroundings for personal use for years, will need to get used to it as it will now be protected government property,“ said the official.

The Gautam Nagar tomb was part of the original 95 monuments identified by the government and Intach for conservation during Commonwealth Games in 2010. The first phase included protection and conservation of only those monuments located en route to the stadiums or near them. This building and several others were part of the second phase involving larger monuments in prominent locations which did not have many encroachmentlegal issues. Once conservation is over, a protected building tag under the Delhi Archaeology Act will ensure the monument remains protected after conservation.