Historical Monuments of Chandigarh

Chandigarh' s historical monuments like the Capitol Complex, and the Martyr's Memorial are historical monuments to boast of.

Martyr's Memorial

Location: Sector-3, Chandigarh
Timing: 10:00 AM To 05:00 PM

Just right of the Assembly building one can see the Martyr’s Memorial. The Martyrs’ Memorial honors all who had laid down their lives in India’s long-drawn freedom struggle. The memorial consists of a square enclosure with one side elongated into a ramp by which one mounts the enclosing wall, Within the enclosure are to be symbolic figures of a prone man, a snake, and a lion set amid ruins, The concrete ramp permits one to see, from above, the Capitol in its entirety and creates a promenade -rising and descending.

Just beyond the solar monument is the tower of shadows a demonstration of Corbusier's theories of sun control, consisting of a series of platforms oriented to the Cardinal points and containing sun breakers on three sides (except north). This concrete structure is a culmination of the in depth studies of Corbusier on the path of the sun and ways to control its penetration in to the built up space. The ‘Tower of Shadows' occupies a square of 15.5m.Its facades give varying sun-control solutions for the four cardinal directions. The ‘Course of the Sun', the preliminary design sketches for which indicate two tall parabolic arches of steel standing in a pool of water, was to depict the deviation between the summer and winter solstice.

Situated adjacent to the memorial, this was to be a huge earth tilled hill, which will have its lower half in concrete relief work, and the top covered with grass turf. The relief will be in the form of Corbusier’s diagram of daily balance of light and darkness, which in his words "rules man's activity".