Things to do in Chandigarh

Landmark · Sector 1

Le Corbusier's Assembly, Secretariat and High Court around a vast concrete plaza with the Open Hand monument — inscribed by UNESCO in 2016 as part of his transnational World Heritage listing.

Local tip: It is a working seat of two state governments, so access is by free guided tour at fixed times with photo ID, not a wander. Book ahead through the tourism office. Go in late afternoon when the concrete warms and the Open Hand turns in the wind.

Culture · Sector 1, near Sukhna

Forty acres of courtyards, waterfalls and thousands of mosaic figures made from broken bangles, tiles, sockets and rubble — built in secret and illegally by a road inspector, Nek Chand, over eighteen years.

Local tip: Go early on a weekday and go slowly; the point is the sequence of low doorways forcing you through the space, which is lost when it is crowded. The third phase with the swings and the arcade is the part most rushed visitors miss.

Nature · Sector 1, at the foot of the Shivaliks

A three-kilometre man-made lake dug in 1958 by damming a seasonal stream, with a long promenade, no motorboats, and the hills rising directly behind it.

Local tip: This is the city's living room. Come at sunrise for the light on the water and the regatta crews, or after six for the entire city walking laps. The Sukhna wildlife sanctuary path behind it is open and almost empty.

Neighborhood · Sector 17

The pedestrian city centre — a car-free concrete plaza of shopfronts, fountains and colonnades designed as the commercial heart of the whole city.

Local tip: It has faded since the malls arrived, which is exactly why it is worth seeing: an intact piece of mid-century civic planning, still working, still full at seven in the evening. The bookshops and the old restaurants around the edges are the substance.

Nature · Sector 16

Thirty acres and several thousand rose varieties, laid out in 1967 and claimed as Asia's largest rose garden.

Local tip: February and March are the point — the Rose Festival fills it and the flowering is genuinely spectacular. The rest of the year it is a very good ordinary park, which is still more than most Indian cities have.

Culture · Sector 10

A Corbusier-designed museum holding a major collection of Gandhara Buddhist sculpture, allotted to India at Partition and moved here from Lahore.

Local tip: Almost nobody goes, and the collection is nationally important — second-century stone Buddhas from the north-west frontier in a building by Le Corbusier. Combine it with the Government College of Art next door and you have the best quiet half-day in the city.