A lost 16th century Mughal garden in the heart of New Delhi is to be transformed into one of the world's largest city centre parks, in a multimillion pound project from the Aga Khan and India's government.
The park will be based around Emperor Humayun's Tomb, the world heritage site believed to have been the inspiration for the Taj Mahal, and will include the Purana Qila, the medieval fort of India's Mughal and Afghan rulers, a 16th century caravanserai, smart restaurants and a museum to tell their stories.
Its driving force in India, the Aga Khan's local director Ratish Nanda, believes the project will not only provide jobs for the area's poor largely Muslim community, but also act as a peaceful sanctuary from the cacophony that comes from the capital's 16 million people.
His vision is of an oasis where visitors can quietly read a book in the shade of its rare trees, appreciate the city's rich Mughal history and enjoy Qawwali concerts in its amphitheatre to celebrate its role as the birthplace 700 years ago of Sufi music. It will recreate the city's Ridge forest and propagate some of its threatened trees and bushes to sell in its nursery.
Mr Nanda, who revived Kabul's Bagh e Babar park for the Aga Khan Trust, said he believes the Sunder Nursery, which will eventually expand from its current 170 acres to a 1,200 acre site one and a half times the size of New York's Central Park, will become the cultural and environmental heart of the city.
"We want to restore the wow factor," he said. "What other place in the world has a 14th century Sufi landscape in 100 acres of greenery? This is the largest collection of Islamic buildings in India. Humayun's Tomb is a World Heritage Site, and we're hoping as a result of our work, this [park] will be included in that.
"300,000 children visit Humayun's Tomb every year and we could triple that."
The first stage of the new park has already been transformed. Until recently it was an overgrown parched jungle of scrub, a dump site for building rubble, home to packs of street dogs and migrant workers, with the air of an abandoned public lavatory.
Its Mughal era tombs – sited as close as possible to the auspicious shrine of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin – had been raided for architectural salvage and were overgrown and vandalised. Its trees – a rare collection of the most exotic from throughout the British Empire – had been reclaimed by wild creepers.
A small army of gardeners, labourers, landscape and conservation architects are now on course to open the first 170 acre section in 2015. They have removed more than 1,000 trucks of dumped rubble, cleared acres of wild jungle, levelled the ground and laid modern versions of classical Persian gardens with hand-carved marble and sandstone fountains and water channels.
The Lakkarwala Burj tomb has been restored and set in a new rose garden, while craftsmen have recreated entire sections of white Quranic verses on the red sandstone interior walls of the Sunderwala Burj tomb.
The Sunder Nursery project will eventually employ hundreds of craftsmen, security guards, gardeners, managers, musicians and teachers from the Nizamuddin Basti, one of India's poorest communities, and will become self-financing through entry charges.
Very few, if any, of the world's great parks have their own unique musical culture, and the Sunder Nursery will showcase it with regular Sufi Qawwali concerts – the devotional singing and clapping which can transform followers into Whirling Dervishes.
"We have built an amphitheatre for events because this area has a 700 year old musical legacy, the Qawwali tradition was born here," Mr Nanda said.