Lal Chowk, Srinagar: The Clock Tower, the Markets and Where to Buy What (2026-27)

Lal Chowk is the centre of Srinagar: the square with the clock tower, the shopping streets around it, and the place every taxi driver means when he says "city". It is 5 km from Dal Lake and about 10 to 12 km from the airport, it costs nothing to walk, and the shops run from about 10 am to 8 pm. Since the remake of August 2023 the square and Residency Road are wire-free and walkable, and Polo View next door is a pedestrian street.

I grew up a few kilometres from here, in the old city, and Lal Chowk is where the city does its buying: dry fruits and saffron, shawls and pherans, books, bakeries, and the one restaurant that has served wazwan since the 1920s. This page is the walk I would take you on, with where each market is, what it sells, when it opens, and how not to get fooled. The rest of the city is in our Srinagar guide.

Where is Lal Chowk, and how is it laid out?

Lal Chowk sits on the south bank of the Jhelum, in the middle of Srinagar. The precinct runs along Residency Road from the Amira Kadal bridge at one end to Tyndale Biscoe School at the other, and the clock tower, the Ghanta Ghar, stands on the roundabout at the square's eastern end. Everything a visitor wants is within ten minutes on foot: Polo View, Residency Road, the Bund along the river, Maharaja Bazaar, and the lanes of dry-fruit shops behind the square.

What is Lal Chowk famous for?

Three things: its history, its clock tower, and its shops. The name means "Red Square". It was given in the 1940s by left-wing activists, inspired by the Russian Revolution, while they fought the Maharaja, and the square has been the city's main business district since the early twentieth century. In 1948 Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled the Indian flag here after the first Kashmir war and promised a referendum from the same spot. For the rest of the century it was where Kashmir's politics were staged.

The clock tower was built in 1980 by Bajaj Electricals, which is why older Srinagar people still call it the Bajaj tower. In 1992 the BJP's Murli Manohar Joshi hoisted the flag on it on Republic Day under heavy guard; the paramilitary forces kept up the ceremony until 2009, when the official hoisting moved to Bakshi Stadium. On 10 April 1993 an arson attack destroyed much of the commercial centre, with an estimated 125 people killed and some 250 shops and homes burnt; who set the fire is still disputed. Grenade attacks near the tower in 2019 and 2020 injured civilians. None of that is visible today, but it is why the square means more to Kashmiris than a shopping street.

The Ghanta Ghar, remade in 2023

The tower you see now was rebuilt under the Srinagar Smart City project and opened on 14 August 2023, together with the new Residency Road and Srinagar Square. The old structure was partly demolished for it, which drew criticism from people who wanted the original kept. The new one has clocks on all four faces run from a single processor, so they finally agree with each other; a chinar-leaf motif and Roman numerals; a built-in battery that keeps it running for seven hours in a power cut; and a chime every hour that carries across the square. Around it the streets were dug up for underground power and telecom lines, wider footpaths, drainage, seating and lighting.

On 26 January and 15 August the tricolour is hoisted here with heavy security and big crowds; for a quiet visit, avoid those two days and come on a weekday evening, when the square is at its busiest between 5 and 8 pm.

Shopping in Lal Chowk: where to buy what

The square itself is banks, pharmacies and electronics. The shopping a visitor wants is in the streets off it, and each street has a speciality.

The Government Arts Emporium

The Kashmir Government Arts Emporium on Residency Road sits in the old British Residency, a grand building on its own lawn. Prices are fixed, which is the point: it is the place to learn what a real pashmina, a kani shawl or a hand-knotted carpet costs before you bargain anywhere else. Listings give its hours as about 10 am to 6 pm, Monday to Saturday, closed on Sundays; they disagree on the closing time, so go before 5. Entry is free, and an hour there is the best education in Kashmiri crafts you will get for nothing.

How not to get fooled

There are a lot of fake saffron sellers in Srinagar, and the lanes around Lal Chowk have their share. Buy saffron only from a shop that shows the GI label, in a sealed pack; never loose, never from a man with a tin. Crafts are closer to our family's heart, and harder. Real Kashmiri handwork is slowly dying, because most of what is sold as "handmade" is machine work, often not made in Kashmir at all, and the real thing, slow and a little imperfect, cannot compete on price. The government now puts a QR-coded GI label on genuine handmade pieces in 18 crafts, from pashmina and sozni to papier-mache and carpets. Scan it in the shop.

Craft by craft, with the one check that matters for each, is in what to buy in Kashmir; for shawls, see our guide to real pashmina.

How to tell real Kashmiri saffron from fake, and what it should cost: Kashmiri saffron.

Polo View: the pedestrian market

Polo View is a 450 ft double row of shops a minute from the clock tower, built in 1954 by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad on a polo ground to rehouse shopkeepers who had lost their shops in a fire near Lambert Lane. In May 2023 it reopened as Srinagar's first fully pedestrian, wire-free market: the two-way road down the middle became a cobbled path, the chinars were kept and lit, and the cables went underground. It is the easiest place in the city to shop with older parents or a pram, and the cafes along it are where the city's students sit.

Shops open from about 10 am to 8 pm, later in summer, and most are open on Sundays, though individual shops take their own day off. Parking is paid roadside and scarce; come by auto or on foot from the Bund.

Timings, and the Sunday question

The square is a public road and never closes. Shops around it open at about 10 am and shut between 8 and 8:30 pm, and the busiest hour is the early evening. Sundays are the catch: many shops in the Lal Chowk lanes close, Polo View mostly stays open, and a Sunday flea market sets up on the road between Lal Chowk and Polo View from early morning until the early afternoon, selling woollens, shoes and household goods at local prices. If a particular shop matters, call it or check its Google listing the day before; the listings disagree, and so do the shopkeepers.

What to eat around Lal Chowk

Ahdoos on Residency Road opened as a bakery in 1918 and became a restaurant in the 1920s; it was the first in the valley to serve wazwan to the public, and its rista, gushtaba and rogan josh are still the safe introduction. The bakeries on Residency Road do sandwiches, patties and kahwa; the tea stalls in the lanes do noon chai from copper samovars with bread from the kandur. For the old-city dishes I grew up on, masala tchot and halwa paratha, cross the river.

Every Wazwan dish, and what a trami costs, is in our Wazwan guide; more places to eat across the city are in where to eat in Srinagar.

The breads, the winter harissa and the walk through the old city are in downtown Srinagar: the old city walk.

The walk: the Bund, Amira Kadal and Zero Bridge

The best hour at Lal Chowk is the one you spend away from the shops. From the clock tower walk to the river and turn along the Bund, the old riverside promenade on the Jhelum, past the back of Residency Road. Amira Kadal is the bridge at the start of the precinct; downstream the river bends past the GPO to Zero Bridge, the wooden arch bridge built in the late 1950s, closed to cars since the 1980s, taken down in 2012 and rebuilt by hand in deodar and walnut for about ₹11 crore. It is pedestrian only, and since 2023 it has been part of the Jhelum riverfront project, with the pathways extended to the GPO. Cross it to Rajbagh for the cafes.

Evenings on the river and the lake are in our Srinagar guide; the water itself is in Dal Lake.

Is Lal Chowk safe, and what will you notice?

For a visitor, yes, in the way any busy Indian city centre is. What you will notice is the security presence: police posts, occasional vehicle checks, and once in a while a cordon-and-search of the hotels and lanes, as on 13 February 2026. The two flag days bring barricades and crowds. The square empties by 9 pm, and cabs are hard to find after that, so book your ride back. Pickpockets are the ordinary risk, and the lanes are tight; keep bags in front. The valley-wide answer, with the timeline and the official helplines, is in is it safe to visit Kashmir now?.

Getting there, and staying nearby

From the airport it is about 10 to 12 km and 30 minutes; from the Dal Lake hotels 5 km. Rapido is the most reliable cab app in Srinagar, and Aala and Novo also work; an auto from Lal Chowk to the old city costs ₹80 to ₹120. The Tourist Reception Centre on Residency Road is where the Tourist Police sit and where buses to the resorts leave. Hotels around Lal Chowk are cheaper and more central than the lake, and noisier; the areas are compared in hotels in Srinagar. The city's distances to Gulmarg, Pahalgam and Sonamarg, measured from here, are in Srinagar to Pahalgam and how to reach Kashmir.