Lahore has been the capital of Punjab under the Ghaznavids, the Mughals for a period, the Sikh state, and British Punjab. It has been the largest city of the region for a thousand years.
Under the Sikhs it was Ranjit Singh Ji's capital for forty years and its Sikh-period fabric, the samadhi, the gurdwaras, the havelis of the sardars, is substantial and largely uncatalogued.
Under the British it was the administrative and educational centre of the province: Government College, the Mayo School of Art, the Punjab University, the Lahore Museum, The Tribune, the Punjabi and Urdu press, the film studios.
Almost every Punjabi cultural institution of the twentieth century began there, and in 1947 those institutions were split, moved or lost. Indian Punjab spent thirty years rebuilding an equivalent and has never fully done it.
The city today is the second largest in Pakistan and the centre of its cultural and publishing life.
Amritsar is fifty kilometres away. The two cities were one urban system for centuries and now have no functioning road, rail or trade link between them.
The city is old and its early record is thin. It appears under the Ghaznavids in the eleventh century as an eastern capital and it has been continuously important since.
Under the Mughals it was a capital and its fort, mosques, gardens and tombs are the largest body of Mughal architecture outside Delhi and Agra.
Under the Sikhs it was the seat of the state and under the British it was the provincial capital, and by 1947 it was the largest and most cosmopolitan city of the whole region.