UNESCO Inscribed Six Rajasthan Hill Forts, Chittorgarh, Kumbhalgarh, Ranthambore, Gagron, Amber and Jaisalmer, as a World Heritage Property on 21 June 2013

The World Heritage Committee inscribed the Hill Forts of Rajasthan on 21 June 2013, at its 37th session in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Six forts make up the property, Chittorgarh, Kumbhalgarh, Ranthambore, Gagron, Amber and Jaisalmer, on 736 hectares of inscribed land with a buffer zone of 3,460 hectares, according to UNESCO’s list entry.

UNESCO’s announcement that day named the sites by town: Chittorgarh, Kumbhalgarh, Sawai Madhopur, Jhalawar, Jaipur and Jaisalmer. ICOMOS, the advisory body that evaluates cultural nominations for the Committee, ties the towns to the forts. Ranthambore is in Sawai Madhopur district, Gagron is about 10 km north-east of Jhalawar and Amber is counted under Jaipur.

Two attempts and one added fort

India’s first dossier reached the World Heritage Centre on 1 February 2011. At its 2012 session in Saint Petersburg the Committee sent it back, asking India for a clearer reason for choosing the components and more detail on management. An advisory mission was also recommended, and ICOMOS visited Rajasthan from 23 to 26 November 2012.

A revised nomination arrived on 31 January 2013 and added Jaisalmer, a fort in desert terrain with a town inside its walls. ICOMOS approved its report on 6 March 2013. ICOMOS recommended criteria (ii) and (iii) and said criterion (iv), which the State Party had also sought, had not been justified.

What the Committee wrote under (ii) and (iii)

Under criterion (ii), the Committee’s decision says the forts “exhibit an important interchange of Princely Rajput ideologies in fort planning, art and architecture”. The decision adds that Rajput building shared ground with Sultanate and Mughal styles, drew on neighbours and earlier work, and influenced later regional styles such as Maratha architecture. Our piece on the Maratha military landscapes covers the twelve Maratha forts UNESCO inscribed in 2025.

Under criterion (iii), it calls the six forts “an exceptional testimony to the cultural traditions of the ruling Rajput clans”. Inside the walls, it says, were garrisons, palaces, temples and urban centres, and the ruling clans patronised religion, arts and literature over several centuries. The Committee’s summary says the fortifications run up to 20 kilometres in circumference and make use of the river at Gagron, the dense forest at Ranthambore and the desert at Jaisalmer.

Fortified towns, not only walls

ICOMOS reports that the nomination drew on ancient Hindu treatises such as the third book of the Arthashastra, which ranked hill forts as the best form of military architecture. Four types appear in that scheme, hill, water, forest and desert forts, and the six chosen cover that range of ground. Within Rajasthan the dossier counted more than a hundred forts, of which 54 had the key features of Rajput military architecture.

The origins of the Rajputs are a long-running scholarly debate, taken up in our article on who the Rajputs were. The Committee’s text dates the princely states that built these forts to the 8th to 18th centuries, and ICOMOS places the emergence of the Rajput clans around the 7th and 8th centuries. Most of the forts had urban settlements inside the walls, some had trading centres and most had temples. ICOMOS counts 85 historic water structures at Chittorgarh alone, 20 of them still working, including three tanks dating from the 7th century.

Six forts, six kinds of ground

Chittorgarh covers 305 hectares on a plateau ICOMOS puts 500 feet above the plain, and its remains span the 8th to the 16th centuries. Seven gateways lead up to the last and main one, Ram Pol. Rana Kumbha, who ruled from 1433 to 1468, is linked to the Vijay Stambh, a 37 m tower, and to a palace that bears his name. Britannica records three sieges, by Alauddin Khalji in 1303, Bahadur Shah of Gujarat in 1534 to 1535 and Akbar in 1567 to 1568, after which Mewar moved its capital to Udaipur.

Kumbhalgarh, at 1,100 m in the Aravallis, has outer walls ICOMOS dates to 1443 to 1458. According to the Committee, it was built in a single process, apart from the later Fateh Singh palace, and its design is credited to Mandan, an architect known by name who also wrote on the craft at Rana Kumbha’s court. ICOMOS adds that Akbar’s general held it only once, briefly, in 1578. Wall length depends on the page: the Committee’s summary says up to 20 km, ICOMOS gives 20 km in one place and 14 km in another, and the Indian government’s 2024 report says the wall is claimed to run 33 km but measures 14 km.

Ranthambore is the only forest fort of the six. The fort stands on Thambhor Hill inside Ranthambore National Park, with a wall 5.4 km round and four gates. UNESCO says the remains of Hammir’s palace are among the oldest surviving structures of an Indian palace, and ICOMOS dates the Hammir Mahal to 1281 to 1301 and a Ganesh temple to as early as the 5th century. Britannica says Akbar retook Chitor and Ranthambhor in 1568 to 1569 and then settled terms with every Rajputana prince except Mewar.

Gagron is the river fort, 23 hectares at the meeting of the Ahu and Kali Sindh rivers, on a pass that gave it a hold on trade routes. ICOMOS gives its ramparts as 10 to 15 m high, with corner towers reaching 25 m and a cliff of 93.6 m on the river side.

Amber is the palace of the Kachchwaha Rajputs. UNESCO calls it a key 17th-century phase in a shared Rajput and Mughal court style, shown in the buildings and gardens Mirza Raja Jai Singh I added. ICOMOS records Man Singh Mahal as dating from 1589 to 1614 and the audience courts from 1622 to 1667, a 325 m tunnel to Jaigarh Fort, and a pulley and Persian wheel system that lifted water from Maota Lake into the palace.

Jaisalmer, which Britannica says Rawal Jaisal founded in 1156, sits on a rock outcrop ICOMOS puts 76 m above the plain. The outer wall has 99 bastions of dry-laid sandstone, and eight Jain temples were built there between the 14th and 17th centuries, the oldest dated 1389. UNESCO calls the town inside it, inhabited from the outset and still lived in, an important and in some respects unique example of a sacred and secular fort. Britannica adds the Gyana Bhandar, a library of old Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts.

Who looks after them

Four forts are Monuments of National Importance under the 1951 national Act and, in India’s own reports to UNESCO, fall under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Kumbhalgarh, Ranthambore and Jaisalmer were listed in 1951 and Chittorgarh in 1956, and a 2010 amendment adds a 200 m protection zone around each. Gagron and Amber are state-protected monuments under Rajasthan’s 1968 Act, and Amber has a further 50 m buffer notification.

A State Level Apex Advisory Committee, set up by order on 11 May 2011 and chaired by the Chief Secretary of Rajasthan (the state is profiled in our Rajasthan at a glance), steers all six. The Amber Development and Management Authority acts as the overarching body, under a notification of 14 October 2011.

India’s 2023 periodic report says the ASI allocates conservation funds each year for its four forts, while Amber and Gagron sit with the state government, which can plough back two-thirds of the revenue it earns there. The 2024 state-of-conservation report lists ASI Jaipur Circle work at Ranthambore in 2023 to 2024 on the Navlakha gate complex, the Nagad Khana and the Mishradhara gate. For Amber, the Amber Development and Management Authority reports conservation and electrical spending of Rs 537.37 lakh (about Rs 5.37 crore) over the five years from 2019 to 2020 through 2023 to 2024.

How many people visit

The ASI’s table for 2024 to 2025 counts 1,070,173 visits to Chittorgarh Fort and 388,122 to Kumbhalgarh. Ranthambore and Jaisalmer charge no entry fee, so India’s periodic report says no visitor count exists for them. Amber is state-run and is not in the ASI table. The state-of-conservation report puts Gagron’s visitors at 34,571 in 2023 to 2024, of whom 64 were foreign.

What comes next

The Committee’s 2025 decision welcomes what it calls extensive conservation work across the components and encourages more at Ranthambore, along with extra staff for Gagron. It also welcomes a photogrammetric survey of Jaisalmer Fort and its buffer zone, and notes that some recent work may have included reconstruction, citing paragraph 86 of the Operational Guidelines.

For Jaisalmer, the Committee records that the Fort Management Authority is not yet set up and asks for a site management plan, a visitor plan and an ownership register of buildings. In 2021 it welcomed the State Party’s advice that no mining or blasting had taken place around Chittorgarh since inscription, and asked for news of a legal challenge before the Supreme Court of India. The 2025 decision asks India to report by 1 December 2026, for the Committee’s 49th session.