Badshahi Ashurkhana

Built in 1594 by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, only a few years after he founded the city and raised Charminar, this is an ashurkhana, a hall where the Shia community gathers to mourn the martyrs of Karbala. Its walls carry Persian cut-tile mosaic finished in 1611, worked in a Deccani palette of its own, with teardrop medallions the height of a person; the wooden colonnade in front came later, under the Nizams. It stands a few streets from Charminar, and most visitors go straight past. During Muharram it becomes a centre of commemoration and the historic alams (standards) are brought out. Shoes off, dress modestly, ask before photographing.

Persian tilework from Charminar's own decade, a few streets away and almost unvisited