New Delhi

New Delhi is the capital of India, a planned city within the National Capital Territory of Delhi on the west bank of the Yamuna. Its center was designed by the British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, with wide avenues, roundabouts and rows of trees.

King George V announced the move of the capital of British India from Calcutta to Delhi at the Delhi Durbar of 1911 and laid the foundation stone of the new city. It was built south of the walled Old Delhi of the Mughals, on land with the ruins of earlier Delhi cities, and was inaugurated in 1931. When India became independent in the late 1940s, New Delhi became the capital of the new republic. The central zone of bungalows and tree-lined roads, known as Lutyens' Delhi, is kept under strict building rules.

Maruti Suzuki, the maker of the Swift and Alto small cars, has its head office in New Delhi. Hero MotoCorp, also based in the city, makes motorcycles and scooters such as the Splendor. NTPC, the state power company, runs coal, gas and solar power plants across India from its offices in the city.

India Gate, an arch by Lutyens, honors the soldiers of the British Indian Army who died in the First World War. Rashtrapati Bhavan, the residence of the President of India, mixes Mughal and classical forms under a large copper dome. Connaught Place, a ring of white colonnaded buildings around a park, is the shopping and business center laid out by the British. Humayun's Tomb, built in the 16th century, is a Mughal garden tomb that inspired the Taj Mahal.