Ahmedabad became the first city of India to get the World
Heritage City tag from the UNESCO. The decision was taken at UNESCOs World
Heritage Committee Meeting at Krakow in Poland. The 600-year-old city has now
joined the ranks of Paris, Vienna, Cairo, Brussels, Rome and Edinburgh and put
India on the world heritage city map. A proposal in this regard was sent to the
UNESCO in 2010 at the behest of Mr. Modi, who then Chief Minister of Gujarat.
For over 600 years, the city has stood for peace as a
landmark city where Mahatma Gandhi began India’s freedom struggle. It has stood
for unity with its elegant carvings in its Hindu and Jain temples, as well as
standing as one of the finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture and Hindu-Muslim
art.
Ahmedabad was in competition with New Delhi and Mumbai
for the title.
The walled city of Ahmedabad was founded by Ahmed Shah.
It has 26 ASI-protected structures, hundreds of pols that capture the essence
of community living and numerous sites associated with Mahatma Gandhi who lived
here from 1915 to 1930. It is constituted out of residential settlements Pol
and has a specific scale of its community based settlement grouping. Several of
such settlements combined together forms a Pur neighbourhood.
The historic city has several Pur neighbourhoods forming
the entire fortified historic city. These various Pur have its own urban
structure which is self-sufficient for the communities, where each Pol once
again is a self- sufficient unit. In 1984, the first study for conserving
heritage structures was carried out. A heritage cell was also set up by the
Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
Ahmedabad has now joined the privileged club of heritage cities
like Paris and two cities in the subcontinent (Bhaktpur in Nepal and Galle in
Sri Lanka)
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