Lahore's Street Art and Mural Scene: A Walking Guide to Pakistan's Most Creative City

Lahore has always been a painted city — the Mughal emperors covered their palace walls with frescoes, the Sikh court commissioned paintings of extraordinary refinement, and the tradition of decorated architecture runs through the city's DNA. What is new is the contemporary street art movement that has emerged in Lahore's public spaces over the past decade — sometimes commissioned, sometimes guerrilla, sometimes somewhere between the two — that has turned certain streets and neighbourhoods into open-air galleries worth visiting deliberately.

The Anarkali and Walled City Murals

The streets around Anarkali Bazaar — one of the oldest markets in South Asia, allegedly named for a courtesan buried alive by Emperor Akbar — have become one of Lahore's most active street art corridors. The project was partly driven by the Rang De Lahore initiative, which commissioned local and international artists to paint the walls and shop shutters of the bazaar's lanes. The results range from graphic portraits of Lahori cultural figures to abstract geometric work to verses from Lahori Sufi poets rendered in large-scale calligraphy.

Walk from the Anarkali metro station toward the covered bazaar in the morning, when shop shutters are down — the murals on the shutters are only fully visible before the shops open. After 10am, many are obscured by open shutters or parked vehicles.

The NCA Wall — Fine Art Goes Public

The National College of Arts (NCA) on The Mall has a long boundary wall along The Mall and Lawrence Road that has been used for rotating commissioned murals by students and faculty. The quality is consistently high — the NCA is the older sibling of Karachi's IVSAA in terms of Pakistani fine art training — and the wall serves as an unofficial portfolio exhibition for the school. Walk the length of the boundary wall and you'll see work that ranges from figurative painting to installation-style applied work.

Gulberg's Cafe Wall Culture

Lahore's cafe boom of the 2010s brought with it a phenomenon familiar from Melbourne and Brooklyn: cafes that commission artists to paint their interior and exterior walls as part of the brand identity. In Gulberg, several cafes have walls worth visiting:

• Chaaye Khana (multiple locations, Gulberg flagship) — The chain's Gulberg branch has evolving commissioned art on its interior walls; the mural programme has featured some of Pakistan's most interesting emerging illustrators.
• Lain (Gulberg) — A restaurant-cafe whose exterior and interior walls are commissioned to a different artist each year. Check current state as the work changes.
• Various Gulberg III side streets off MM Alam Road have organically accumulated painted walls — more Instagram-discovery than organised art tour, but worth the wander.

The Walled City Painted Havelis

Within the old city walls, several havelis (traditional merchant mansions) have been partially restored with their original painted facades revealed — frescoes depicting hunting scenes, floral patterns, and figurative work from the Sikh and early British periods. The Haveli Nau Nihal Singh near Lohari Gate and the Haveli Mian Khan near Bhati Gate both have painted facades worth seeing. The Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme has documented and is restoring many more — ask at their Walled City Lahore office near Delhi Gate for access information.

Sadequain at the Punjab Public Library

A specific pilgrimage for art lovers: the Punjab Public Library on The Mall contains a significant collection of original work by Sadequain — Pakistan's greatest 20th-century painter, a calligrapher and muralist whose massive-scale work defined the visual identity of Pakistani public art from the 1960s to the 1980s. Sadequain's calligraphic murals appear in major public buildings across Pakistan (Lahore Museum, Islamabad's Frere Hall, etc.), but the library holds paintings on canvas and paper that allow a closer engagement with his extraordinary draftsmanship. Ask the library staff for the Sadequain section — it's not prominently signed but staff will direct you.