Awadh's court city that still feeds poetry and spice
Lucknow is Uttar Pradesh’s capital and second city, with 2.8 million people in the 2011 census—India’s eleventh-largest city. Nawabi patronage made it North India’s cultural capital; UNESCO later named it a City of Gastronomy, and it anchors the state’s Heritage Arc with Agra and Varanasi.
Legends tie the name Lakhnau to Lakshmana’s estate Lakshmanapuri or to goddess Lakshmi; another credits architect Lakhna Ahir’s Qila Lakhna. From the sixth century BCE the site sat in Kosala among the sixteen Mahajanapadas. Mughals absorbed Awadh; Saadat Khan became Nizam in 1722 at Faizabad. Fourth Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula moved the court to Lucknow in 1775, raising monuments such as the Bara Imambara, Chota Imambara, and Rumi Darwaza and fostering Hindu–Muslim Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb.
East India Company pressure culminated in the 1856 annexation of Awadh under commissioner Sir Henry Lawrence and the exile of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. Lucknow became a major 1857 rebellion centre; the Residency siege and later Shaheed Smarak still mark the fight. In 1916 the Congress session here produced the Lucknow Pact and the first joint meeting of Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah. The provincial capital shifted from Allahabad to Lucknow in 1920; it remained capital when United Provinces became Uttar Pradesh in 1947.
The Gomti River splits Trans- and Cis-Gomti banks across the Indus-Gangetic plain at about 123 metres elevation. Municipal area grew from 402 to 631 square kilometres after eighty-eight villages joined in December 2019. Humid subtropical summers climb into the forties Celsius; winters fog from mid-December, with most of the year’s 827 millimetres of rain in the July–October monsoon. Today the city hosts IIM Lucknow, IIIT Lucknow, Central Command headquarters, and a rising IT and auto-manufacturing cluster.
Source: Lucknow
