A First-Timer’s Guide to Connaught Place
Few addresses put you closer to the pulse of the capital than Connaught Place. Laid out in graceful Georgian colonnades, “CP” is where Delhi shops, dines, meets and gathers — and it begins a short walk from our door on New Barakhamba Road.
Begin with the Inner Circle
The Inner Circle is the heart of it: a sweep of white colonnades housing flagship stores, decades-old bookshops, coffee houses and restaurants that have fed Delhi for generations. Walk one full loop — about twenty minutes — and you will have the geography of the district in your head for the rest of your stay. The roads spoking outwards from it are numbered blocks, which makes finding an address far easier than it first appears.
What Is Worth the Walk
- Janpath Market — handicrafts, textiles and silver, best haggled over in the late afternoon
- Jantar Mantar (1.3 km) — the 18th-century masonry observatory, quietest just after opening
- Gurudwara Bangla Sahib (2.5 km) — the sarovar and the community kitchen are open to all
- Central Park — inside the Inner Circle, a useful place to sit out the afternoon heat
See Connaught Place on foot in the morning, ride the Metro in the afternoon, and keep the evening for the colonnades when they light up.
A Practical Note on Timing
Shops in the Inner Circle generally open around 11 AM and stay open late, so mornings are better spent at the monuments and markets. Delhi’s summers are punishing between April and June; if you are visiting then, plan outdoor walking before 10 AM or after 5 PM. Between October and March the weather does the work for you.
Getting In and Out
Rajiv Chowk, one of the largest interchanges on the Delhi Metro, sits beneath Connaught Place itself, and Barakhamba Road station is the closer of the two to the hotel. Between them you can reach Old Delhi, the airport line and Gurugram without touching a road.