Le Taj Mahal fut construit par Shah Jahan en mémoire de sa troisième épouse, Mumtaz Mahal, décédée en donnant naissance à leur quatorzième enfant en 1631. La mort de Mumtaz laissa l'empereur si profondément bouleversé que ses cheveux auraient blanchi du jour au lendemain. La construction du Taj Mahal débuta l'année suivante ; bien que le bâtiment principal ait été construit en huit ans, l'ensemble du complexe ne fut achevé qu'en 1653. Peu après son achèvement, Shah Jahan fut renversé par son fils Aurangzeb et emprisonné au fort d'Agra, où, jusqu'à la fin de ses jours, il ne put contempler sa création que par une fenêtre. Après sa mort en 1666, Shah Jahan fut enterré ici aux côtés de sa bien-aimée Mumtaz.

Construction along the bank of the Yamuna River was begun by Emperor Akbar in 1565 on the site of an earlier fort. Further additions were made, particularly by his grandson Shah Jahan, using his favourite building material – white marble. The fort was built primarily as a military structure, but Shah Jahan transformed it into a palace, and later it became his gilded prison for eight years after his son Aurangzeb seized power in 1658. The ear-shaped fort’s colossal double walls rise more than 20m and measure 2.5km in circumference. The Yamuna River originally flowed along the straight eastern edge of the fort, and the emperors had their own bathing ghats here. It contains a maze of buildings, forming a city within a city, including vast underground sections, though many of the structures were destroyed over the years by Nadir Shah, the Maratha, the Jats and finally the British, who used the fort as a garrison. Even today, much of the fort is used by the military.