Sat Khanda — "seven storeys" — is the unfinished watchtower that stands between the Chota Imambara and the Husainabad Clock Tower, intended by Nawab Muhammad Ali Shah as a viewing platform from which the royal household could watch processions during the Muharram observances. The tower was begun in 1837 and abandoned at four storeys when the Nawab died in 1842; the other three storeys were never built.
The result is one of the most evocative monuments in Lucknow precisely because of its incompleteness — a stump of fine Nawabi architecture left exactly where the death of its patron stopped the work. Access to the upper levels is restricted, but the building is photogenic from the ground and from the gardens of the Chota Imambara.