Gulabi Bagh Gateway

This beautiful tile-decorated gate located on Grand Trunk Road was entrance to Gulabi Bagh (Rose Garden) from southern side, built in 1655 by a Persian noble, Mirza Sultan Beg who was Admiral of the Fleet under the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan.

The numerical value of the garden name gives its date as 1066 AH, or 1655 AD (Latif, 1892, 134; Schimmel, 1993). Inside, the tomb of Dai Anga dates to 1671, which suggests that a residential garden was probably converted to the tomb-garden after her death. The garden was originally square, with the tomb placed in the center. The square measured 250 Mughal yards (gaz) on a side, slightly smaller than the tomb-garden of Asaf Khan in Shahdara, but larger than those of the great nobles Ali Mardan Khan and Mahabat Khan which lie to the south and east along the Grand Trunk Road.

Extensive residences, villages, shrines, and tomb-gardens began to line the new alignment of the Grand Trunk Road in the mid-seventeenth century—villages like Kot Khwaja Saeed, Bhogiwal, and Begumpura (Woman's Town).