Golden City #2: Agra

 Many people say that Paris is the city of love but I beg to differ. I think the real city of love is Agra. There are two places that you must see when you go to Agra- Red Fort of Agra and Taj Mahal. These two places have incredible history and incredible love stories along with it.

Agra is a Mughal is city that had 6 rulers. One of them was named Akbar. Akbar is known as one of the greatest rulers in the Mughal dynasty. He chose to build the Red Fort after his rise to power and used it as a military point as well as a palace. He was married to woman named Jodha who was from a different part of India. This is where the love comes into play. Because Jodha was from a different part of India, Akbar had some of the architecture of her home brought to the Fort. That is why some of the architecture of the Fort is from Rajasthan. The love story of Jodha and Akbar is wonderful and if you want to know more about it you should watch the Hindi movie called Jodha Akbar... one of my favorite movies of all time.










Akbar had a grandson named Shah Jahan, who was in love with his third wife… Mumtaj Mahal. In their 19 years of being married they had 14 kids. Mumtaj knew that she was not going to survive giving birth to the 14th kid and so she made Shah promise her three things. 1. That their three surviving children would all be educated. 2. That he would not marry and have children with anyone else. And 3. That he would build her something that everyone would see and visit. And so, Shah built the Taj Mahal- meaning crown palace.






Seeing the Taj in real life is indescribable. It is an amazing structure and the amount of people visiting was crazy.  The Taj is made out of marble with precious and semiprecious stones inlayed. The best time to see the Taj is at night because when the moonlight hits all the stones and marble gleam in the moonlight. One thing that is very interesting is that during World War II the Japanese were supposed to bomb the Taj, however they flew around and went home to report that there was no structure that existed. No one has ever threatened the Taj and even when there was a huge earthquake, the Taj stayed unscathed. The tombs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaj Mahal lay inside the Taj and I believe protect the area with their everlasting love.


Agra really was a city of love in my opinion and the history is insane, but it was time to move on to the place of palaces, elephants, block printing and food- Jaipur.





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