Lalita Ghat

Panchganga takes its name from the mythical meeting of five rivers - Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, Kirana and Dhutpapa. The towering minarets of the Alamgir Mosque, raised by Aurangzeb over an earlier temple, lend the ghat a striking skyline.

When the Scindia royal family rebuilt this ghat in the 19th century, the sheer weight of the marble caused a riverside Shiva temple to subside, leaving it partly submerged and gently tilted - an image now emblematic of the Varanasi waterfront.

Built by the Rajput king Man Singh of Amber around 1600, the honey-stone palace here is one of the oldest surviving structures on the riverfront, its windows and balconies carved in fine Rajasthani style.