Nankana Sahib marks the exact place Guru Nanak was born, and reaching it now means many Sikh pilgrims must apply for a visa to visit the birthplace of their own faith.
The birthplace itself
The complex's central gurdwara, Gurdwara Janam Asthan, marks the specific site traditionally identified as Guru Nanak's birthplace in 1469, making Nankana Sahib one of the most historically significant locations in Sikhism independent of any later doctrinal or martial history attached to other major gurdwaras.
A border drawn after the fact
Partition in 1947 placed Nankana Sahib inside Pakistan, while the large majority of the global Sikh population lives in India, meaning most Sikh pilgrims must now obtain visas and travel through a formal cross-border process to visit the birthplace of their faith's founder, a bureaucratic complication with no religious basis but with substantial practical effect on pilgrimage access.
As this entry's companion article covers
The 1921 massacre carried out under the site's hereditary custodian, and the reform movement it triggered that led to democratically elected committees managing Sikh gurdwaras generally, are addressed in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.