User Rating:
Not right?
by phileasfogg
New Delhi, India
June 4, 2006
Sabz Burj, more commonly known as Neeli Chhatri, stands in a grassy traffic island at the intersection of two very busy roads, Lodi Road and Mathura Road, right next to Nizamuddin. Watch out for the traffic—it’s usually chaotic. The tower isn’t a particularly high building, but it’s striking enough. Walk across the surrounding lawn, and a couple of steps will take you up onto a platform, which forms a plinth for the building.
Sabz Burj is a `Baghdadi tomb’, an octagonal structure that looks more Central Asian than Mughal. The eight sides are alternately wide and narrow, and each has a recessed arch that’s ornamented in a pattern of incised plaster, paint, or glazed tile. No two arches are decorated alike. You can walk around the outside of the tomb, as we did, and admire the craftsmanship—though it’s in poor shape, it still has remnants of long-lost beauty.
The tower is kept locked so you can’t go in. Happily, though, the gate is a simple barred one, so you can crane your neck and peer up towards the ceiling. Even though the outer dome is a high, rounded one, the ceiling is a very shallow dome, so shallow in fact that it looks only slightly curved. It’s painted all over in an amazingly intricate (if weather-beaten) design in reds and blues.
Now a word about its history. The Sabz Burj probably dates back to the 1530s-40s, but some sources put its date to even a century earlier. Be as it may, for a number of years during the days of the Raj, the building functioned in an unusual capacity—as a police station! It was later taken over by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which gave the dome a brand new finish—in bright, deep blue tile, rather than the original green tile that gave the dome its name. Fortunately enough, the tilework around the drum of the tower remained: it’s a pleasing pattern of squares in white, green, yellow, and blue. Currently, the ASI seems to be using the inside of the tower as a store for building material.
There isn’t any entry fee to the Sabz Burj. In fact, there isn’t even anybody at the gate: just walk in.
From journal Historic Delhi Part 1: Odds and Ends