Taj Mahal India

Legendary

This white marble mausoleum was built by emperor Shah Jahan to be a tomb for his wife.

Photo by Hamdi Diego Ben Hadj Fre

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The Taj Mahal changes color all day long. It glows pink at sunrise, blinding white at noon, gold at sunset, and silver under a full moon.

That's the marble doing it. The stone came from quarries at Makrana in Rajasthan, about 300 kilometers away, and it's slightly translucent, so it catches and throws back whatever light hits it.

The building is a tomb. Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor, built it for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in June 1631 giving birth to their fourteenth child.

He was traveling on a military campaign when it happened. He ordered a mausoleum grander than anything his dynasty had ever built.

Construction began in 1632 on the bank of the Yamuna River in Agra. The land belonged to a Rajput noble, who was given a palace elsewhere in the city in exchange.

About 20,000 workers came from across India, Persia, Central Asia, the Ottoman Empire, and Europe. A team of architects led by Ustad Ahmad Lahori directed the work.

Roughly 1,000 elephants hauled the marble blocks from Rajasthan. Twenty-eight kinds of semi-precious stone were brought in for the inlay, including lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and jade from China.

Those stones were cut into flowers and vines and set flush into the marble, a technique so precise that you can run your hand across the wall and feel nothing but smooth stone.

The main mausoleum was finished in 1648. The mosque, guest house, gateway, and gardens took another five years, with the whole complex completed in 1653.

The tombs visitors see inside are decorative. The real graves of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan lie in a chamber below.

Shah Jahan was buried beside her after his death in 1666. His tomb is the one thing in the entire building that isn't symmetrical.

UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site in 1983.

Arrive at sunrise, when the crowds are thinnest and the marble turns pink. Get close to a wall and look at the inlaid flowers, then step back and notice that the Arabic calligraphy around the doorway gets larger as it rises, so it looks the same size from the ground. Walk to the far end of the garden for the classic reflection in the long pool.