Fatehpur Sikri, the Red Sandstone City Akbar Began Building in the Early 1570s, Has Been a UNESCO World Heritage Site Since 1986 and Is Kept by the Archaeological Survey of India

Fatehpur Sikri is a red sandstone city on a ridge in Agra district, Uttar Pradesh, that the Mughal emperor Akbar began building in the early 1570s and left as his capital in 1585. UNESCO put it on the World Heritage List in 1986. The Buland Darwaza, the city’s great gateway, still marks the south side of its Jama Masjid, and Agra’s district administration places the city 36 to 40 km west of Agra along NH-21.

What UNESCO listed in 1986

UNESCO’s entry numbers the property 255 and gives its criteria as (ii), (iii) and (iv). Inside is 60.735 hectares of inscribed land, ringed by a buffer zone of 475.542 hectares. A wall 6 km long, fortified with towers and pierced by nine gates, bounds the city on three sides, and UNESCO says it was planned as a rectangle with a grid of roads and lanes that cross at right angles.

Each criterion gets one sentence. Under (ii), the construction of Fatehpur Sikri “exercised a definite influence on the evolution of Mughal town planning, namely, at Shahjahanabad”, the Delhi city now called Old Delhi. Under (iii), it “bears an exceptional testimony to the Mughal civilization at the end of 16th century”. Under (iv), UNESCO calls the city as a whole “a unique example of architectural ensembles of very high quality constructed between 1571 and 1585”.

Akbar, a saint’s cave and the dates

According to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Akbar, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, shifted his residence and court from Agra to Sikri for 13 years, from 1572 to 1585, to honour the Sufi saint Sheikh Salim Chishti, who lived in a cavern on the ridge. The saint, the Survey adds, had blessed him with a son, named Salim, in 1569, and that Akbar named the city Fathabad, later Fatehpur Sikri. Babur had visited the place in 1527 before the battle of Khanwah and built a garden, a water pavilion and a stepwell there, and the ASI lists stone age tools and pottery dated from the second millennium BCE among the finds on the ridge.

The start date depends on who is counting. UNESCO puts construction at 1571 to 1573. Agra’s district page has Akbar founding the city in 1571 and using it as capital for about 14 years. Uttar Pradesh’s government portal gives 1569 to 1585 as the building period. Daniel Waugh of the University of Washington dates most of the palace complex to 1568 to 1575 and says the Jama Masjid was ordered in 1568.

Both UNESCO and the ASI call it the first planned city of the Mughals. Practically all Mughal institutions were founded here, the Survey says, and it lists the Ibadat-Khanah, the Din-i-Ilahi, the Tarikh-i-Ilahi, the Jharokha-Darshan and the doctrine of Sulh-i-Kul, along with workshops for handicrafts. Akbar’s revenue and rank system, which ran the empire from these years, is covered in our piece on Akbar’s state machinery.

The mosque, the tomb and the Buland Darwaza

On the summit of the ridge, the Jama Masjid is the earliest building, completed in 1571 to 1572, according to UNESCO. The mosque holds the tomb of Shaikh Salim Chisti, which UNESCO calls an extraordinary masterpiece of sculpted decoration, finished in 1580 to 1581 and embellished under Jahangir in 1606. Agra’s district page lists it as the marble tomb, while UNESCO describes the buildings of the city as red sandstone with little use of marble.

South of the mosque court stands the Buland Darwaza, the Lofty Gate. UNESCO dates its completion to 1575, to commemorate the victory in Gujarat in 1572, and calls it by far the greatest monumental structure of Akbar’s reign. A watercolour of 1815 by the artist Sita Ram, held by the British Library, shows the gateway approached by steps and crowned with domed kiosks, and the library’s record says it probably commemorates Akbar’s conquest of Gujarat in 1573. The record adds that the archway carries two inscriptions, one quoting a saying attributed to Jesus.

Height is where the sources part. For UNESCO it is 40 m. Over 130 feet, about the same, is Waugh’s figure, and he counts 123 steps up to the gate. Agra’s district page and the Uttar Pradesh portal both say 54 m, and none of the pages says what the measurement starts from.

Audience hall, pillar and palaces

Porticos encircle the Diwan-i-Am, the hall of public audience, UNESCO says, with the emperor’s seat set into the west side as a small raised chamber behind perforated stone screens. On the north side of the palace court stands the building popularly known as the Diwan-i-Khas, the hall of private audience, which UNESCO says is also called the Jewel House. UNESCO’s wording, “popularly known as”, treats the name as a popular label.

Its best-known feature is a single central pillar. In Waugh’s description it holds the emperor’s raised seat, joined by walkways to a gallery around the walls, and says it carries arabesque carving. Samuel Bourne photographed it between 1863 and 1865, and the Rijksmuseum’s print of it is titled “Remarkable pillar in the Dewan-i-Kass”.

UNESCO also lists the Panch Mahal, which it calls an entirely columnar five-storey structure laid out asymmetrically on the pattern of a Persian badgir, a wind-catcher tower. Waugh counts 84 columns in it, each decorated differently. Jodha Bai’s palace is, in UNESCO’s words, the largest building of the residential complex, with richly carved interior pillars, balconies, perforated stone windows and an azure-blue ribbed roof. Waugh thinks it likely the emperor’s main harem residence and notes baths heated by hot-air flues.

Also on UNESCO’s list are the Anup Talao (the Peerless Pool), the Khwabgah or sleeping chamber, Birbal’s House, the Caravan Sarai, the Hiran tower and the pavilion of the Turkish Sultana.

Why the city is red

Fatehpur Sikri stands on the sloping levels of outcrops of the Vindhyan hill ranges, UNESCO says, and the ASI calls Sikri an extension of the upper Vindhyan ranges. The palaces, the Survey says, were built of red sandstone in the trabeate order, meaning beams laid across posts, with pillars, ornamental arches, brackets, eaves and balconies, and few domes. The International Union of Geological Sciences lists Fatehpur Sikri with the Red Forts of Agra and Delhi and the Taj Mahal among structures built of Vindhyan sandstone.

Sikri’s stone travelled on. Sinha writes that the town also supplied red sandstone for Shah Jahan’s projects, including the Taj Mahal, and our Taj Mahal article places the quarries at Sikri and Dholpur. None of the pages I read names the quarries that supplied Akbar’s own builders.

Quarrying features in UNESCO’s integrity statement too. It says mining, a past threat to the property, has been controlled by a ban within a 10 km radius of Fatehpur Sikri, and that the ban needs continuous monitoring, particularly for illegal blasting.

The water question and the move to Lahore

UNESCO describes an efficient drainage and water management system and places the city southeast of an artificial lake. The ASI says Sikri sits on the bank of a large natural lake that has now mostly dried up, and that the drainage and water supply point to extremely intelligent town planning. India’s periodic report to UNESCO says the north side of the city was protected by a natural lake. Sinha, in an excerpt from his 2021 book, writes that Akbar dammed a water body to make the lake.

Why the court left is argued differently by each source. Uttar Pradesh’s portal blames the water supply. Waugh writes that problems keeping the supply adequate may have contributed. Sinha argues against it: he cites the historian Nadeem Rezavi’s count of at least 13 stepwells and eight tanks, says an ASI excavation at the Todarmal Baradari found a square tank with a central fountain, and says Hakim’s Baoli still supplies water to the town. He ties the move to politics instead. Akbar’s half-brother Mirza Hakim died in Kabul in July 1585, and the emperor then went to Lahore, staying about 13 years and returning in 1598 to Agra, not Sikri.

UNESCO’s own text is brief. It says that after the capital moved to Lahore in 1585, Fatehpur Sikri remained a place for temporary visits by the emperors. Sinha lists them: Akbar in 1601, Jahangir for about three and a half months in 1619, and Shah Jahan on several occasions, including 1628 and 1644. The English merchant William Finch, visiting in 1610, wrote that the city had declined as a capital soon after Akbar’s death, according to Sinha, and Peter Mundy still called it flourishing in 1633.

Who looks after it and how to visit

UNESCO says the ASI manages the property under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958, with its 1959 Rules and the 2010 Amendment and Validation Act. India’s periodic report adds that Fatehpur Sikri is notified as a Centrally Protected Monument of national importance. It is one of 40 protected monuments in the Taj Trapezium Zone, a 10,400 sq km area where a Supreme Court order of December 1996 banned coal and coke in industries; the other two World Heritage properties in the zone are the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. UNESCO also records repairs from the British period onward to the Buland Darwaza, Jama Masjid, Panch Mahal and Jodha Bai’s palace, and chemical preservation of painted inscriptions in the mosque and the saint’s tomb.

The ASI says the site is open from sunrise to sunset. Entry for Indian citizens and visitors from SAARC and BIMSTEC countries is Rs 50 in cash or Rs 35 online, other foreign visitors pay Rs 600 or Rs 550 online, and children under 15 enter free. Licensed guides wait near the ticket counters, and a site museum near the Diwan-i-Am counter opens from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm, closed on Fridays, with free entry. Agra’s district page says private vehicles park at the base and battery buses run to the gate, that online tickets are sold through the ASI portal at asi.paygov.org.in, and that the tourist helpline is 1363. Fees are revised from time to time, so the portal is the reference.

Ministry of Tourism data compiled from the ASI put Fatehpur Sikri’s visitors in 2024-25 at 443,158 domestic and 97,441 foreign. The domestic figure was 315,212 the year before, a rise of 40.59 per cent, and foreign visitors rose from 93,963 to 97,441. Fatehpur Sikri ranked sixth among the ASI’s ticketed monuments for foreign visitors that year, behind the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Qutub Minar, Humayun’s Tomb and the Baori at Abhaneri.