Red Fort

The story of Red Fort

The Red Fort, Lal Qila, is the fortress that anchored Shahjahanabad, the Mughal capital now known as Old Delhi. Its most striking feature is right in front of you: the long line of red sandstone walls, built to hold a palace complex as well as a fort.

Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned it on 12 May 1639, after deciding to move the Mughal capital from Agra to Delhi. Work began in the sacred Islamic month of Muharram, on 13 May 1638, and it was completed on 6 April 1648. The design is attributed to Ustad Ahmad Lahori, and the building belongs to the mature Mughal world of Shah Jahan’s reign, where Persian and Indian traditions were brought together in one imperial setting. The complex was originally adorned in red and white.

Its shape is not a neat regular rectangle. The boundary walls are asymmetrical because they were made to contain and subsume the older Salimgarh Fort. The fort spans 254.67 acres and is enclosed by 2.41 kilometres of defensive walls. Those walls rise to 18 meters on the river-facing side and to 33 meters on the city-facing side, and they are reinforced with turrets and bastions. The fort is octagonal, with the north–south axis longer than the east–west axis. The main entrance is the Lahori Gate, named for its orientation toward Lahore, then part of the Mughal Empire.

If you look near the gate, the Chhatta Chowk, also called Meena Bazaar, once sold silk, jewelry, and other goods for the imperial household. Beyond the gate, an outer court meets a north–south street that originally divided the military side of the fort on the west from the palaces on the east. The most significant surviving parts are the walls and ramparts, the main gates, the audience halls, and the imperial apartments along the eastern riverbank. The marble, floral decoration, and double domes are part of what later Mughal architecture looks like here. Adjacent to the Lahori Gate, the barbican added during Aurangzeb’s reign altered the gate’s appearance.

The fort’s life after Shah Jahan was turbulent. Aurangzeb added the Moti Masjid, and after his death the Mughal administrative and fiscal system declined, with the palace degenerating through the 18th century. In 1739, Nadir Shah defeated the Mughal army and plundered the fort, taking treasures including the Peacock Throne. After the Battle of Delhi in the Second Anglo-Maratha War, the East India Company took over Mughal territories and installed a resident here. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, many marble structures were demolished by the British, although the defensive walls remained largely intact, and the fort was later used as a military garrison.

The modern national story of India is tied to this gate. 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 every Independence Day and delivered a nationally broadcast address from the ramparts.

Archaeology has pushed the site’s history much deeper. Excavations at the Red Fort have uncovered Ochre Coloured Pottery culture artefacts dating from 2600 BCE to 1200 BCE. The Archaeological Survey of India, Delhi circle, maintains the monument today. It is a Monument of National Importance and, as part of the Red Fort Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2007.

If you are planning your visit, this is the place to pause at the main gate and read the fort as both palace and fortress: gate, bazaar, court, and walls, all packed into one imperial enclosure.