Taj Mahal

Where is Taj Mahal?

You will find it in Agra, India.

27.1750° N, 78.0419° E

The story behind it

In 1631, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan's beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died giving birth to their fourteenth child. Heartbroken, Shah Jahan ordered a magnificent tomb built in her memory beside the Yamuna River in Agra, calling on the finest architects, craftsmen and artists from across his empire and beyond. Construction of the main marble mausoleum took about sixteen years, though the surrounding gardens, gateway and mosque took longer to finish. The white marble walls are inlaid with thousands of pieces of coloured semi-precious stone, forming intricate flowers and flowing calligraphy from the Quran. Years later, Shah Jahan was overthrown by his own son and imprisoned in a nearby fort, where he could only gaze at the Taj Mahal from a window until his death; he was later buried beside his wife inside it. Today visitors walk through a grand red sandstone gateway to see the marble tomb reflected in a long pool, its colour shifting from pink at dawn to golden at sunset.

Find it on the globe

Taj Mahal is there as a little three-dimensional model of the building itself. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.

How was it built?

Craftsmen carted white marble from quarries in Makrana, Rajasthan, over 300 kilometres away, using a fleet of elephants and specially built wagons. More than 20,000 workers, including masons, stone-cutters, inlayers and calligraphers from across Asia, worked under chief architect Ustad Ahmad Lahori. Workers built a huge earthen ramp to haul materials up to the dome, and precious stones like jade, turquoise and lapis lazuli were carried in from as far away as China and Afghanistan for the inlay work. The main building took about sixteen years to finish.