New Delhi: UNSECO World Heritage Sites Humayun Tomb & Museum

The Taj's grandfather

Bega Begum commissioned this for her husband in 1565, nine years after he died, and hired a Persian architect to build it. What went up was the first great Mughal garden tomb in India, and every element the Taj is famous for appears here first: the tomb set at the centre of a four-part charbagh divided by water channels, the double dome, the red sandstone with white marble inlay, the perfect bilateral symmetry.

The Taj was begun sixty-seven years later. Standing here first changes how you see it.

The building

Octagonal in plan, on a platform nearly seven metres high, with arched recesses on every face and a marble dome that was the first of its kind in India — an outer shell for the silhouette and an inner one sized for the chamber below.

Inside are Humayun's grave and, remarkably, more than a hundred others: this became the dynastic necropolis, and Mughal princes, wives and nobles were buried in the chambers around him for the next two centuries. It is sometimes called the dormitory of the Mughals.

It is also where the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was captured by the British in 1857, having taken refuge at the tomb of his ancestors.

The restoration

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture spent a decade on this site from 2007 — removing a million cubic feet of later earth fill to recover the original garden levels, restoring the water channels so they run again, and re-laying the stone paving. It is generally reckoned the best conservation work done in India.

The site museum, opened in 2022 and largely underground, holds finds from the complex and is genuinely well made.

Also in the complex

Isa Khan's tomb, twenty years older than Humayun's and complete with its own enclosure and mosque, and the Barber's Tomb in the main garden — nobody knows whose it actually is.

Three options

Guide only; guide with tickets; or car, guide and tickets.

Practical

Three hours. Entry is ₹600 for foreign nationals. Open daily.