Agra Fort

Agra Fort replaced the earlier Badalgarh fort held by the Chauhan Rajputs on the same site, and construction under Akbar's reign between 1565 and 1573 used red sandstone quarried at Fatehpur Sikri, cut and dressed by an estimated four thousand builders. Shah Jahan, whose personal taste ran to white marble rather than his grandfather's red stone, rebuilt several interior structures in the 1630s and 1640s: the Diwan-i-Khas for private audiences, the Khas Mahal residential pavilion, and the Sheesh Mahal dressing room, whose walls are set with thousands of small convex mirrors. The Musamman Burj, an octagonal marble tower overlooking the Yamuna and the Taj Mahal in the distance, is where Shah Jahan spent his final years under house arrest after Aurangzeb seized the throne in 1658; court accounts describe him viewing the mausoleum of his wife from that tower until his death in 1666. The fort changed hands to the Marathas in 1785 and then to the British East India Company in 1803 following the Second Anglo-Maratha War, after which large sections of the Mughal-era palace quarters were demolished to build colonial barracks. UNESCO listed the fort as a World Heritage Site in 1983, the same year as the Taj Mahal.

Agra Fort's public entry is restricted to the Amar Singh Gate on the southern side; the Delhi Gate, the fort's grandest entrance, stays closed to tourists because it opens onto an active Indian Army cantonment area. A significant share of the fort's interior, including sections still used by the military, remains off-limits to visitors, which surprises travellers expecting a footprint comparable to the exterior ramparts. Licensed guides cluster near the ticket counter and charge in the range of ₹400–600 for a two-hour circuit; verify the laminated identification card before agreeing a price. Wheelchair access is limited to the lower courtyards, since the connecting ramps between palace levels involve uneven stone stairs original to the Mughal construction.

Agra Fort's Musamman Burj offers the clearest publicly accessible view of the Taj Mahal's dome from anywhere in the city, framed through marble jali screens Shah Jahan reportedly looked through during his imprisonment. Visiting in the late afternoon avoids both the mid-morning tour-bus surge and the harshest sun on the unshaded courtyards. Agra Fort Railway Station sits directly across the road from the Amar Singh Gate, making a same-day pairing with Fatehpur Sikri or Sikandra straightforward by prepaid auto-rickshaw. The Diwan-i-Am's pietra dura peacock-throne platform, though the throne itself was carried off by Nadir Shah's invasion in 1739 and now sits in Tehran, remains one of the few spots in the fort where the scale of Mughal courtly ceremony is still legible in the stonework alone.