Humayun's Tomb
Maqbara-e-Humayun
The first great Mughal garden tomb — the drawing from which the Taj Mahal was later developed.
Humayun died in 1556 after falling down his library stairs; the tomb his widow commissioned nearly a decade later invented a building type. A high plinth, a symmetrical red sandstone mass banded in white marble, a double dome, and around it a walled charbagh divided by water channels into thirty-six squares. Nothing quite like it had been built in India before, and almost everything monumental the Mughals built afterwards is a variation on it.
For a long time it was a ruin with a village inside it, its channels dry and its garden planted over. A twenty-year restoration by the Archaeological Survey of India and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture stripped a million kilograms of concrete off the roof, re-laid the paving, and got the water running again. The result is the rare heritage site that is better now than it was a generation ago — and the surrounding necropolis, from Isa Khan's octagonal tomb to the Barber's Tomb, rewards an unhurried hour.
- 01Isa Khan's tombA sunken octagonal enclosure just inside the gate, twenty years older than Humayun's and quieter by far.
- 02The charbaghWater channels restored to working order, dividing the garden into the quartered plan of a Quranic paradise.
- 03The double domeAn outer shell for silhouette and an inner one for proportion — the trick that made the Taj possible.
Combine with Sunder Nursery and Nizamuddin in one afternoon; the three sit within a kilometre of each other.