Travel to Peninsular India: Hyderabad: the Qutb Shahi City: Photo 5

From the Char Minar there's a good view of the four streets that diverge from it, neatly sectioning the old city into four quarters--a geometry borrowed from the char bagh layout of Persian gardens.  This is the view north, toward the river.  The freestanding arch is the southernmost one of four, the char kaman.    Each stands 750 feet apart from the one opposing it, and at the crossing is a central piazza, precisely 375 feet beyond this arch.  It's all part of Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah's plan for a grand city.  The design was by Muhammad's prime minister, Mir Momim Ashtrabad, who was from Isfahan.  The western arch led to the Qutb Shahi palaces, now gone.  So, too--lost to urban reconstruction--is the great square and central fountain that once occupied the area between the four arches.

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