The Golden Triangle

3,000 Years of Capitals

Delhi

Delhi is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth — mythology places the founding of Indraprastha here by the Pandava kings of the Mahabharata more than 3,000 years ago. Historians count at least seven distinct cities built at or near this site: from the Tomara Rajput city of Dhillika in the 8th century to Qutb ud-Din Aibak's Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526), through five successive Mughal capitals to the British-built New Delhi inaugurated in 1931. Every layer is still visible — and all of them extraordinary.

In Old Delhi, the Red Fort (Lal Qila) rises from the riverbank behind 2.41 kilometres of red sandstone walls built between 1638 and 1648 by Emperor Shah Jahan, who also commissioned the Taj Mahal. Just 500 metres away, the Jama Masjid — India's largest mosque, built 1644–1656 by the same emperor and capable of holding 25,000 worshippers in its courtyard — broods magnificently over the rooftops of the spice bazaar. South of Old Delhi, Humayun's Tomb (1572) was the first great garden-tomb in India and the direct architectural prototype for the Taj Mahal, built by Humayun's widow Hamida Banu Begum; it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993. The Qutub Minar (73 metres, built 1193 CE), the world's tallest brick minaret and a UNESCO site since 1993, anchors the city's south. New Delhi's India Gate — a 42-metre triumphal arch designed by Edwin Lutyens inscribed with the names of 82,000 Indian soldiers who died in World War I — commands the ceremonial axis of the British capital.

An Emperor's Monument to Love

Agra

The city of Agra is synonymous with the Taj Mahal — and rightly so. But Agra is far more than one building, extraordinary though that building is. This was the beating heart of the Mughal Empire under Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan, and the concentration of Mughal architecture it contains is unmatched anywhere on earth.

The Taj Mahal needs no preamble — yet it exceeds every expectation. Built between 1632 and 1653 by the Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his third and most beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth, it employed 20,000 artisans and drew materials from across the world: white Makrana marble from Rajasthan, black marble from Charkoh, red sandstone from Fatehpur Sikri, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, turquoise from Tibet, carnelian from Arabia. Twenty-eight varieties of precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid using the Italian pietra dura technique, producing floral designs so fine that a single flower may contain 60 individual stone fragments. The completed structure stands 73 metres high. It changes colour with the light — blush pink at dawn, dazzling white at noon, golden at sunset, silver by moonlight. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983.

Three kilometres away, the Agra Fort — a UNESCO site begun by Akbar in 1565 across 94 acres of red sandstone ramparts — served as the seat of Mughal power for three successive emperors. Its apartments contain some of the most intricate white marble inlay work in existence. Forty kilometres away, the ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri — Akbar's sandstone capital built 1571–1573 and mysteriously abandoned within 15 years, UNESCO since 1986 — stands almost perfectly preserved: a surreal, roofless empire frozen in time.

India's Most Romantic Royal City

Jaipur — The Pink City

Jaipur was conceived from scratch in 1727 by the astronomer-king Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II — making it one of the first planned cities in Asia and certainly the most magnificent. Unlike the organic, labyrinthine cities that preceded it, Jaipur was laid out on a precise grid following the Vedic treatise Shilpa Shastra: nine rectangular blocks corresponding to the nine divisions of the universe, with wide roads, uniform building heights and a rational water-supply system that was ahead of its time by two centuries. The famous terracotta-pink colour that earns Jaipur its nickname was applied throughout the old city in 1876 when Maharaja Ram Singh II ordered it painted in preparation for the visit of the Prince of Wales — and the colour was mandated to remain by law.

The Amber Fort (built 1592 by Maharaja Man Singh I, overlooking the shimmering Maota Lake) is Jaipur's defining monument: a fusion of Hindu and Mughal architecture in ochre sandstone and white marble, whose Sheesh Mahal — the Hall of Mirrors — is lined with thousands of tiny convex mirror fragments that replicate the light of a single candle into a galaxy of stars. The Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds, 1799) — a five-storey honeycomb facade of 953 latticed windows through which the royal ladies of the zenana could watch the street processions without being seen — is the most photographed building in Rajasthan. The City Palace (still partly occupied by the current Maharaja) and the Jantar Mantar (the world's largest stone observatory, 1734, UNESCO since 2010) complete the old city's extraordinary portfolio. Jaipur is also the "Gem Capital of the World" — accounting for nearly 70% of India's gem-cutting and jewellery export trade.