The old city of Rawalpindi — the pre-British, pre-partition town that predates the cantonment grid by centuries — is a maze of narrow lanes, crumbling havelis, and architectural fragments that most visitors miss entirely. The area around Raja Bazaar and Kashmiri Bazaar contains structures that date to the Sikh period and earlier: carved wooden facades, projecting balconies, internal courtyards now subdivided into workshops and storage rooms.
More striking are the Hindu temples scattered through the old city, most of them abandoned at partition in 1947 when Rawalpindi's large Hindu population left almost overnight. Some have been repurposed as warehouses or homes. Others simply stand, decorated stonework still visible beneath accumulated grime, their function now illegible to most of the people who pass them daily. Walking the lanes with attention is worthwhile: this is one of the less-visited cities in Pakistan with this density of pre-partition urban fabric, and it has not yet been tidied or curated for tourism. Bring patience and good shoes.