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The Taj Mahal
Shah Jahan's white marble tomb for Mumtaz Mahal on the banks of the Yamuna
The Taj Mahal was built out of grief. When Mumtaz Mahal, the favorite wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, died in childbirth in 1631, he ordered a tomb for her that would evoke the gardens of paradise. The result, in white marble inlaid with semiprecious stones, is the best-known building in India and a summit of Mughal architecture. Its symmetry is so complete that only Shah Jahan's own cenotaph, placed beside his wife's after his death, breaks it. The marble shifts with the light, pinkish at dawn, white at noon and golden at sunset, and millions of people travel to Agra each year to see it.
The complex lies on the south bank of the Yamuna River in Agra, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, about 200 kilometers southeast of Delhi. Visitors pass through a red sandstone gateway onto a formal charbagh, a garden divided into four parts by water channels, with the mausoleum raised on a marble platform at the far end, against the river. Four minarets stand at its corners, leaning slightly outward so they would fall away from the tomb in an earthquake. The central onion dome rises to about 73 meters. A red sandstone mosque and its mirror-image guest house flank the tomb. Inside, verses from the Quran in black marble calligraphy and floral inlay of carnelian, jasper and lapis lazuli cover the walls.
Construction began in 1632 under the court architect Ustad Ahmad Lahori and engaged some 20,000 artisans, with marble from Makrana in Rajasthan and stones gathered from across Asia. The mausoleum was finished around 1643 and the full complex in 1653. Shah Jahan was deposed by his son Aurangzeb in 1658 and spent his last years confined in Agra Fort, within sight of the tomb. UNESCO inscribed the Taj Mahal in 1983, and the 2007 New7Wonders vote named it one of the seven. It is India's most visited ticketed monument, with about 6.9 million visitors in 2024–25. Air pollution yellows the marble, so India restricts industry in a protected zone around Agra and periodically treats the walls with clay packs.