India’s Mughal Empire

Completed by the Mughal emperor Akbar in 1573 on the site of a ruined fortification, Agra Fort bears a striking resemblance to Delhi’s Red Fort.

Massive, rust-red sandstone walls of around two and a half kilometres enclose 94 acres, its eastern flank overlooking a bend in the Yamuna River and within sight of the Taj Mahal.

It’s the south-eastern section, behind the Amar Singh gate entrance, that holds the most interest: gardens, open-sided audience halls, pavilions and royal apartments plus a couple of dainty mosques.

Infamously imprisoned by his own son, it was from here that emperor Shah Jahan spent his final days gazing across at his beloved Taj.

In the late 1500s, the Mughal Emperor Akbar constructed a new capital near Agra – Fatehpur Sikri.

The Mughals’ first planned city was monumental in scale and design, and notable for the mastery and finesse of its predominantly red sandstone architecture. The city’s rather abrupt abandonment after fifteen years remains a mystery, though a lack of water is usually cited as the cause.

Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the atmospheric ‘ghost city’ provides a fascinating and unique insight into the Mughal court. Huge colonnaded courtyards, lofty audience halls, a treasury and royal apartments skilfully blend Muslim and Hindu traditions – in keeping with Akbar’s enlightened perspective.

Completed in 1656 and still among India’s largest and most beautiful mosques, the Friday Mosque, or Jama Masjid, was yet another of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s great projects (which climaxed in the Taj Mahal).

With a huge courtyard, a great bulbous dome and a pair of slender striped minarets, its graceful form is enhanced by the decorative interplay of sandstone and marble. Pivotal to the character and atmosphere of Old Delhi, it’s often full to capacity – around 25,000 – during Friday morning prayers.

For a small fee you can climb one of the minarets. Although the narrow stairwell is claustrophobic, there are stunning views over the courtyard across Old Delhi to the Red Fort.

Built in the late 1500s as a mausoleum for the Mughal emperor Humayun, this Persian-inspired confection of sandstone and marble laid the foundations for a style that reached its apogee in the Taj Mahal. Set atop an imposing arcaded plinth, it’s a profoundly elegant and atmospheric monument.

Like the Taj Mahal, this tomb is also a ‘monument to love’, built at great expense by Humayun’s second wife nine years after his death.

The surrounding formal gardens, with their shallow water channels and features, are integral to the site’s appeal and make for one of Delhi’s loveliest and most tranquil havens.

Delhi’s largest historic monument was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the 1640s, and the massive sandstone walls still bristle with crenellations between the elegant cupolas. Within lies a 250-acre complex of gardens, audience halls, pavilions, royal apartments and a small white-marble mosque.

Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the fort personifies the scale and power of the dynastic Mughals whose three-century reign profoundly influenced the history and culture of North India.

One of the world’s most beautiful buildings is not merely an exquisite tomb but a monument to love. The Taj Mahal was completed after two decades’ labour in 1653 by the great Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to entomb his wife, Mumtaz.

It stands at the head of formal gardens by the Yamuna River. The combination of milky-white marble (much of it inlaid with semi-precious stones, a technique known as pietra dura), a great bulbous dome and four slender minarets lend the mausoleum an astonishing almost ethereal beauty.

Admire it at your leisure – its well-kept gardens coax lingering, relaxed visits.

Sometimes referred to as the ‘baby Taj’, this outstanding 17th-century noble’s tomb with formal gardens showcases the kind of pietra dura inlay on white marble that reached its apogee with the Taj Mahal.