The official residence of the Rashtrapati or President of India, Rashtrapati Bhavan was built by the British as a 340-room Viceregal Lodge atop the Raisina Hill. It is larger than Versailles and covers an area of over 200,000 sq.ft. To its west lies the President-s private gardens, the Mughal gardens. It is closed to the public except for a period in February when it is thrown open. The garden is terraced at three levels and has a circular pool surrounded by layers of flowers and creepers. The spacious plaza at the foot of Rashtrapati Bhawan is known as Vijay Chowk.

The wide Rajpath forms an axis leading to the triumphal arch India Gate in the east. The parade on 26 January, Republic Day, proceeds on the Rajpath to Red Fort, and three days later, the Beating of the Retreat takes place at Vijay Chowk. Rashtrapati Bhawan, or rather, the Viceregal Lodge, is really part of the new urban complex that was built after King George V announced in 1911 that the British would shift their capital (from Calcutta) to Delhi.

Raisina was then but a wilderness, south of Shahjanabad. It was there that a team of architects led by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker designed the new capital. They viewed several architectural monuments of India, and although they did not admit to being impressed by them, their imprint is pervasive in the structures the artchitects erected. They are said to have felt that the architectural style of the new capital should be "neither Indian nor English nor Roman, but Imperial". It took 20 years and 15 million pounds to build the new capital, which was inaugurated in 1911.