Posted on 01.10.2012 and 06.09.2014
Located about 2.5 km northwest of Taj Mahal, near its gardens, the Agra Fort, also known as the Lal Qila, Fort Rouge or Qila-i-Akbari, was built by Akbar the Great (1542-1605), the grandson of Babur, the first Mughal Emperor, direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Genghis Khan through his mother. Akbar found there a brick fort, became a ruin after it changed several times the owner during the previous half century. He didn’t like half-measures, so named Agra the capital of its empire and completely rebuilt the fort with red sandstone from Barauli area in Rajasthan. To the construction worked 1,444,000 builders, for eight years, completing it in 1573. Abul Fazl, the court historian of Akbar, records that 5000 buildings were built inside the Agra Fort, in Bengali and Gujarati style, but only 30 have survived till today, on the southeastern side. Shah Jahan, Akbar's grandson, who built Taj Mahal, was the one who given to the fort the today's shape. At the end of his life, he was restrained here by his son, and he died in Muasamman Burj, a tower with a marble balcony with a view of the Taj Mahal.
The fort is actually a walled city, with a semicircular shape, like a bow, its chord being parallel to the river Yamuna. Double ramparts have massive circular bastions at intervals, with battlements, embrasures, machicolations and string courses. It is surrounded by a 12m deep moat and has four gates, of which two are notable: the Delhi Gate and the Lahore Gate (also known as the Amar Singh Gate), the only one through which is entering today. A wooden drawbridge linking the Delhi Gate and the mainland, over the moat, and inside is placed an inner gateway called Hathi Pol (Elephant Gate), guarded by two life-sized stone elephants. The drawbridge, slight ascent, and 90-degree turn between the outer and inner gates, make the entrance impregnable.
