Architecture · a Light

The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for one named woman

Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631, and construction of her tomb at Agra began in 1632 on the orders of her husband, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The main mausoleum took about twelve years and the wider complex around twenty. The building is almost exactly symmetrical, its four minarets lean very slightly outward so that they would fall away from the dome in an earthquake, and the white marble came from Makrana in Rajasthan with inlaid stones brought from as far as Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. The sources name Ustad Ahmad Lahori as the chief architect. It is one of the few world famous monuments built as a private act of grief for a specific person.

Agra · begun 1632