Red Fort

Approx. Time: 3 hours
Activity Level: Easiest

Visit the largest of old Delhi's monuments, Lal Quila, or the Red Fort. Its thick red sandstone walls bulging with turrets and bastions, have withstood the vagaries of time and nature. The Lal Quila rises above a wide dry moat in the northeast corner of the original city of Shahjahanabad.

Mughal Emperor Shahjahan started the construction of the massive fort in 1638, and work was completed in 1648. The fort sports all the obvious trappings, befitting a vital center of Mughal government: halls of public and private audience, domed and arched marble palaces, plush private apartments, a mosque, and elaborately designed gardens. Even today, the fort remains an impressive testimony to Mughal grandeur, despite being attacked by the Persian Emperor Nadir Shah in 1739, and by the British soldiers during the war of independence in 1857.

Courtesy of India Tourism Board

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