Agra: Taj Mahal, Agra Fort & Baby Taj Guided Day Tour

Three buildings, and the middle one is the lesson

The Baby Taj is the reason to take a tour that includes all three rather than the usual two.

Nur Jahan built Itimad-ud-Daulah for her father between 1622 and 1628. It is the first Mughal building made entirely of white marble — everything before it was red sandstone with marble trim — and the first anywhere in India to use pietra dura, stone inlaid flush into the marble surface.

The Taj was begun four years after it was finished. Every technique on the larger building appears on the smaller one first, at a scale one wealthy family could afford, and the inlay here is denser and finer than anything on its famous descendant.

It is also almost always empty. You can stand in the middle of the garden alone.

Taj Mahal

Shah Jahan began it in 1632. Twenty-two years, twenty thousand workers, marble hauled 400 km from Makrana.

The calligraphy cut in increasing sizes so it reads evenly from the ground. The pietra dura of up to sixty stones per flower. The four minarets tilted outward so an earthquake would take them clear of the tomb. And the single asymmetry — Shah Jahan's own cenotaph, added off-axis by his son.

Agra Fort

Akbar's red sandstone city of 1565, Shah Jahan's marble within it, and the Musamman Burj where he died a prisoner of his own son with the Taj in view down the river.

Four options

Guided tour without tickets; with tickets; with tickets and a five-star meal; or a Delhi-start version with everything included.

Practical

Around four hours from a hotel pickup in Agra.

The Taj is closed on Fridays; the fort and the Baby Taj are open daily, so a Friday version of this tour still works.