Pakistan

Lahore was the seat of the Mughal Empire under Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan and remains Pakistan's cultural pole. The UNESCO-listed Lahore Fort (Shahi Qila) holds the Sheesh Mahal of mirrored mosaic, the Naulakha Pavilion and the Diwan-i-Khas; the Shalimar Gardens (also UNESCO) are the great seventeenth-century Persian-style terraced garden. The Badshahi Mosque opposite the fort is one of the largest in the world (Aurangzeb 1671–73) and the Wazir Khan Mosque inside the walled city is the country's most painted-tile interior. The walled city of Androon Lahore around Delhi Gate, Bhati Gate and Akbari Gate concentrates the haveli architecture and the bazaars; the Royal Trail (Shahi Guzargah) heritage walk from Delhi Gate to the Fort is the standard introduction. The Lahore Museum on the Mall (the original collection curated by Rudyard Kipling's father John Lockwood Kipling) holds the world's largest Gandhara Buddhist art collection. The Food Street on Fort Road and Anarkali Bazaar make the dining and shopping itinerary. The Wagah Border ceremony each evening with India is the closing scene.

Pakistan's north is one of the great mountain regions of the world. The Karakoram, the Hindu Kush and the Western Himalaya converge in Gilgit-Baltistan, with K2 (8 611 m, the world's second-highest peak), Nanga Parbat (8 126 m), Gasherbrum I and II, Broad Peak and the Hispar–Biafo glacier system (the longest contiguous glacier outside the polar regions). The Karakoram Highway from Islamabad through the Kaghan Valley, Babusar Pass, Chilas, Gilgit and Hunza to Khunjerab Pass on the Chinese border at 4 693 m is one of the great mountain road journeys; the Hunza valley with Karimabad, the seven-hundred-year-old Baltit Fort and the eleventh-century Altit Fort, the apricot blossoms in early April and the autumn colours in October–November is the postcard set-piece. Skardu, Shigar and Khaplu in Baltistan are the Baltoro gateway — the K2 base camp trek (about 14 days) and the Concordia confluence are the headline routes. Fairy Meadows reached by jeep and a steep walk gives the front view of Nanga Parbat. The trekking and climbing permit system runs through the Alpine Club of Pakistan and the Tourism Department of Gilgit-Baltistan; the Italian-Pakistani EvK2CNR research station near Skardu has supported scientific work in the region since 1990.

Islamabad is the modernist federal capital, designed in the 1960s by the Greek planner Constantinos Doxiadis and built on a grid of sectors at the foot of the Margalla Hills. The Faisal Mosque (architect Vedat Dalokay, completed 1986) is the largest mosque in South Asia and the visual landmark of the city — five thousand worshippers in the main prayer hall, ten times that on the courtyard. The Pakistan Monument and the Lok Virsa heritage museum are the cultural-axis pair; the Centaurus Mall and the F-7 sector restaurants the modern day-to-day. The Margalla Hills National Park rises directly behind the city — Trail 5 to the Pir Sohawa restaurant is the standard half-day hiking route, the Daman-e-Koh viewpoint sits above sector F-6. The twin city of Rawalpindi holds the bazaar layer (Raja Bazaar, Saddar, Bara Market) and the British colonial cantonment; the Murree hill-station road runs north into the Galyat. The Taxila UNESCO archaeological site (Bhir, Sirkap, Sirsukh and the Buddhist monasteries of Jaulian and Mohra Moradu) is forty minutes west of Islamabad on the GT Road — the meeting point of Alexander the Great, Ashoka's Mauryan India and the Indo-Greek and Kushan kingdoms.

Karachi on the Arabian Sea is Pakistan's largest city — about twenty million people — and its economic capital. The Mohatta Palace (1927, the Karachi residence of Shivratan Mohatta) houses the city's main museum; Frere Hall and the colonial Empress Market are the British-era set pieces; the Quaid-e-Azam Mausoleum holds the tomb of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Clifton Beach and Sea View are the Arabian-Sea promenades, and the Port Grand harbour-side restaurant cluster is the evening scene. Out of the city, the Mohenjo-Daro Indus Valley archaeological site (UNESCO, 2 600 BC) reachable via short flight to Sukkur or Larkana is one of the world's great early-civilisation sites alongside Egypt and Mesopotamia. The shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan Sharif on the Indus is the centre of the Sindhi Sufi tradition — Thursday-night dhamaal devotional dancing — and the great Makli Necropolis at Thatta (UNESCO) is one of the largest funerary cities in the world. The Hinglaj Mata Hindu shrine in the Hingol National Park on the Makran Coastal Highway is reachable from Karachi as a long day-trip and is the southernmost of the great Hindu Shakti Peetha pilgrimage sites.

Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in South Asia and the gateway to the Khyber Pass — the historical caravan and military route between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent that carried Alexander the Great, Mahmud of Ghazni, Babur and the British Indian Army. The walled old city with the Sethi Mohalla havelis, the Mahabat Khan Mosque (1670, gold-domed) and the Qissa Khwani 'Storytellers' Bazaar' is the cultural core; the Peshawar Museum holds one of the world's deepest Gandhara Buddhist sculpture collections. The Khyber Pass itself is conditional access through the political agencies of the federally-administered tribal districts. The hill stations of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — Murree, Nathia Gali, Ayubia and the Galyat trail — are the cool-climate retreats above Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The Swat valley (Mingora, Saidu Sharif, Madyan, Kalam) is the 'Switzerland of Pakistan' — once the heartland of the Buddhist Uddiyana school — and the Kalash valleys (Bumburet, Rumbur, Birir) in southern Chitral hold the unique Kalasha pre-Islamic culture and the Chilam Joshi spring festival in May.

Pakistan's spiritual map runs deep across all the great pre-modern South Asian traditions. The Sufi shrine network — Data Darbar in Lahore (Ali Hujwiri, 11th century, every Thursday qawwali), Bibi Pak Daman in Lahore, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan Sharif on the Indus (Thursday-night dhamaal), Bahauddin Zakariya in Multan, Shah Rukn-e-Alam in Multan, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai in Bhit Shah, Bari Imam in Islamabad — is the living core of the country's religious life and runs in qawwali and Sufi-music traditions that visitors hear every Thursday. Pakistan also holds two of the most important Sikh holy sites in the world: Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur (the burial place of Guru Nanak, accessible directly from India via the Kartarpur Corridor since 2019) and Gurdwara Janam Asthan in Nankana Sahib (Guru Nanak's birthplace), with Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Hasan Abdal as the third pillar. The Hindu shrine of Hinglaj Mata in Balochistan is the southernmost of the great Shakti Peetha pilgrimage sites and the Katas Raj temple complex in Punjab (Mahabharata-era association) is the second major Hindu site. The Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) manages the access procedures and dedicated religious visas.

Pakistan carries one of the deepest archaeological stacks in the world. The Indus Valley Civilization (Mohenjo-Daro near Larkana and Harappa near Sahiwal, both UNESCO, 2 600–1 900 BC) is contemporary with Old Kingdom Egypt and Akkadian Mesopotamia and is the third great Bronze-Age urban civilisation. The Gandhara region around Taxila, Peshawar, Swat and Mardan was the meeting point of Alexander the Great's Hellenistic world with the Mauryan Indian world — the Buddhist Gandhara sculpture (1st–5th centuries AD) is the first iconography to portray the Buddha in human form, and the Lahore Museum and the Peshawar Museum hold the world's deepest collections. The Mughal architectural layer runs from the Akbar-era Lahore Fort (1566) through Jahangir's tomb in Shahdara, Shah Jahan's Wazir Khan Mosque (1635) and Shalimar Gardens (1641) to Aurangzeb's Badshahi Mosque (1671–73); Multan's saint shrines and the Makli Necropolis at Thatta extend the Tomb-of-Rukn-e-Alam style across Sindh. The British colonial layer — Karachi's Frere Hall and Empress Market, Lahore's Mall Road, Murree, Peshawar Cantonment — closes the architectural circuit.