Red Fort

The story of Red Fort

The Red Fort in Old Delhi is the Mughal fortress-palace built as the main residence of the emperors, and the first thing to notice is its red sandstone walls: they give the fort its name, Lal Qila, “Red Fort.”

It was commissioned by Emperor Shah Jahan on the 12th of May 1639, after he decided to shift the Mughal capital from Agra to Delhi. The fort was built as the palace fort of Shahjahanabad, the new capital, and its design is attributed to Ustad Ahmad Lahori, the architect also credited with the Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan took a personal interest in the works, and the major construction was finished on 6 April 1648. At the time, the complex was originally adorned in red and white.

What you are looking at is a large fortified palace rather than a single hall or temple. It spans 254.67 acres and is enclosed by 2.41 kilometres of defensive walls. Those walls are reinforced with turrets and bastions and rise to 33 meters on the city-facing side. The plan is octagonal, with the north–south axis longer than the east–west axis. The fort’s walls and ramparts, the main gates, the audience halls, and the imperial apartments along the eastern riverbank are among the most significant surviving parts. The structure also straddles the Yamuna River, which once fed the moats around most of the walls.

One thing to look for is how the fort combines traditions. It is described as a prominent example of Mughal architecture from Shah Jahan’s reign, combining Persian and Indian architectural styles, and the World Heritage Convention characterises it as embodying “the zenith of Mughal creativity.” The marble details, floral decoration, and double domes belong to later Mughal architecture. The fort also subsumes the older Salimgarh Fort within its asymmetrical boundary walls, so the layout is shaped by an older structure already on the site.

The main entrance is the Lahori Gate, which faces toward Lahore. During Aurangzeb’s reign, a barbican was added there, and Shah Jahan compared it to “a veil drawn across the face of a beautiful woman.” Beside that gate is the Chhatta Chowk, or Meena Bazaar, where silk, jewelry, and other items for the imperial household were sold during the Mughal period. The Delhi Gate is the southern public entrance and shares a similar layout and appearance, with two life-sized stone elephants facing each other.

The fort’s later history is visible in what was lost as well as what survived. In 1739, Nadir Shah plundered it and stripped it of its artwork and jewels, including the Peacock Throne. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, many marble structures were demolished by the British, though the defensive walls remained largely intact, and the fort was later used as a military garrison. A British resident was installed here after the Battle of Delhi, and the fort’s role as a seat of Mughal power ended in the nineteenth century.

It still carries national importance. On 15 August 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the Indian flag above the Lahori Gate, and since then the Prime Minister of India has ceremonially raised the national tricolour there each Independence Day and delivered a nationally broadcast address from the ramparts. The Red Fort was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007 and is also a Monument of National Importance. It is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India, Delhi circle.

Archaeological excavations here have also uncovered Ochre Coloured Pottery culture artefacts dating from 2600 BCE to 1200 BCE. If you pause at the gate and look up at the walls, you are seeing both a seventeenth-century palace fortress and a place whose ground has yielded much older traces.