The Red Fort in Delhi Was Built in Nine Years Between 1639 and 1648, Has Been a UNESCO World Heritage Site Since 2007 and Is Where the Prime Minister Raises the Flag Every Independence Day

The Red Fort Complex in Delhi has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 2007, inscribed under three criteria, (ii), (iii) and (vi). It covers 49.18 hectares, with a buffer zone of 43.43 hectares, and the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan built it as the palace fort of his new capital, Shahjahanabad. ICOMOS, the body that advised UNESCO on the nomination, dates the construction from April 1639 to 1648.

UNESCO’s description says the fort is named for its massive enclosing walls of red sandstone and stands beside an older fort, Salimgarh, built by Islam Shah Suri in 1546. Together they make up the complex. According to ICOMOS, the Ministry of Culture owns it, and UNESCO says the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) manages it directly.

Nine years to build, and dates that do not quite agree

The ASI says Shah Jahan moved his capital from Agra to Delhi in 1638 and laid the foundations of Shahjahanabad, the seventh city of Delhi. Work on the fort itself, it says, began in 1639 and ended after nine years. April 1639 to 1648 is the span in the ICOMOS evaluation. Britannica has Shah Jahan transfer his capital to Delhi in 1648, and the historian Shashank Shekhar Sinha, writing in The Wire, gives 1638 to 1649 for the building of the fort.

Its first name, according to ICOMOS, was Qila-i-Mubarak, the Auspicious Citadel. Incredible India, the Ministry of Tourism’s site, credits the architect Ustad Ahmad Lahori, who it says also designed the Taj Mahal, with its design. That site also gives the area as 255 acres, which does not match UNESCO’s 49.18 hectares (about 121 acres); the UNESCO figure is the one in the inscription record.

Per ICOMOS, this was the first Mughal palace fort laid out on a geometrical grid inside an octagonal plan, set within an octagonal city. Brick clad with sandstone or marble was the main building material, and at its height the court housed some 3,000 people. A comparison in India’s dossier set it beside the earlier Mughal World Heritage sites at Lahore, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, and ICOMOS concluded that the Red Fort “represents advancement in Mughal architecture”.

Walking in from the Lahori Gate

Visitors and the emperor himself entered by the Lahori Gate, the ceremonial public entrance, according to ICOMOS. It has three storeys between two semi-octagonal towers, under a seven-arch arcade with white domes. Soldiers and the people who worked in the fort used the Delhi Gate on the south.

From the Lahori Gate a visitor enters the Chhatta Chowk, a vaulted arcade that served as the palace market, and then the Naubat Khana, the drum house, where musicians greeted grand arrivals. Beyond that point only princes could ride in on horseback, ICOMOS says.

The Diwan-i-Am, the Hall of Public Audience, is a rectangular hall three aisles deep with a facade of nine arches. In an alcove at the back, the royal throne stood under a marble canopy inlaid with coloured stones in the technique called pietra dura.

Behind the hall stands the Rang Mahal, the Painted Palace, named for its coloured interior. In the ASI’s account a water channel called the Nahr-i-Bihisht, the Stream of Paradise, ran through it into a central marble basin fitted with an ivory fountain. UNESCO’s description says the same channel connects the whole row of private pavilions.

Next comes the Diwan-i-Khas, the Hall of Private Audience. Of all Shah Jahan’s buildings ICOMOS calls this the most ornamental: white marble with floral pietra dura on its columns, 32 columns in all, and a flat roof that was originally faced with silver on the underside. A Persian couplet on its wall reads “If there be a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here”, in ICOMOS’s rendering. According to the ASI, its marble dais is said to have carried the Peacock Throne, which Nadir Shah took away. His sack of the fort came in 1739, ICOMOS dates it, and he emptied the treasury.

Beside the emperor’s sleeping chamber, the ASI places the octagonal Muthamman Burj, where the emperor appeared before his subjects every morning. Akbar Shah II added a small balcony to it in 1808, and King George V and Queen Mary appeared there before the people of Delhi in December 1911. Aurangzeb built the marble Moti Masjid, the Pearl Mosque, in 1659 to 1660, ICOMOS says.

What UNESCO inscribed in 2007

At its 31st session in 2007 the World Heritage Committee inscribed the complex (decision 31 COM 8B.32). Under criterion (ii), UNESCO’s text calls the fort the final flourishing of Mughal architecture, a fusion of Islamic, Persian, Timurid and Hindu traditions. On criterion (iii), it says the fort’s planning, architecture and garden design strongly influenced later buildings and gardens in Rajasthan, Delhi, Agra and further afield, and that the complex also records the phase of British military occupation.

Criterion (vi) ties the site to events. UNESCO says the Red Fort “has been a symbol of power since the reign of Shah Jahan”, witnessed the change to British rule and “was the place where Indian independence was first celebrated, and is still celebrated today”.

Four criteria, (i), (ii), (iii) and (vi), were proposed in India’s dossier. ICOMOS recommended three, because later changes had diminished the fort’s overall integrity for criterion (i). ICOMOS’s report records that a first dossier was examined at the World Heritage Bureau in Cartagena in 1993 and deferred until the Army had handed the fort’s major parts to the ASI. In December 2003 the Indian Army handed the fort over, which ICOMOS says met the 1993 requirement. A revised dossier covering both forts reached UNESCO on 31 January 2006, and ICOMOS approved its report on 11 March 2007.

Salimgarh, the older fort beside it

Salimgarh’s date varies by source. Islam Shah Suri, the son of Sher Shah Suri, built it in 1546, UNESCO says. ICOMOS’s history says he began it in 1544, and the Ministry of Culture’s museums portal says it went up between 1545 and 1554 and was unfinished when he died. It stood on an island in the Yamuna, linked to the Red Fort by a bridge, and ICOMOS says Shah Jahan lived there while the Red Fort was under construction.

On Shah Jahan’s last years the sources part ways: ICOMOS says he was imprisoned at Salimgarh, while Britannica says that Aurangzeb confined him in Agra Fort until his death in 1666, as our article on the Taj Mahal also records.

Meanwhile the Yamuna has changed course. Between the two forts the Inner Delhi Ring Road now follows its old line, ICOMOS says, and a two-track railway runs through Salimgarh. British rule saw almost all its Mughal buildings demolished, and ICOMOS treats the fort as part of the complex rather than as a site in its own right.

In 1992 the ASI took over the barracks there from the Indian Army, and the Swatantrata Senani Museum, a memorial to freedom fighters, opened in 1995, according to the museums portal. It shows an Indian National Army uniform worn by Colonel Prem Kumar and coat buttons of Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, and the portal says the barracks held INA prisoners including Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Kumar Sahgal and Dhillon. Their court martial is the subject of the article on the Red Fort trials of 1945.

From 1857 to the flag of 1947

After 1857 the British captured the fort and made it the headquarters of the British Indian Army, ICOMOS says. They demolished many structures, redesigned the Mughal gardens in English style and built barracks in 1867 and 1868: four of three storeys, seven of two and thirteen of one. Sinha writes that Bahadur Shah Zafar was tried in the Diwan-i-Khas and exiled to Rangoon on 7 October 1858.

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Culture, records that Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled the national flag at the Red Fort on 16 August 1947. Photo captions there carry that date, while the introduction says he raised the flag above the Lahori Gate, and The Wire places it a day after the first cabinet was sworn in on 15 August. Its page quotes Nehru’s speech: “We have gathered here on a historic occasion at this ancient fort to win back what was ours.” The Constituent Assembly had adopted the tricolour on 22 July, a history told in the article on Pingali Venkayya.

Since then the Prime Minister has hoisted the flag at the fort every Independence Day, according to the museum. The Press Information Bureau’s programme for the 70th Independence Day, issued on 14 August 2016, shows the ceremony’s form. On arrival at the Lahori Gate the Prime Minister is received, inspects a guard of honour of Army, Navy, Air Force and Delhi Police, and goes to the ramparts. Unfurling of the flag is timed with a 21-gun salute fired by the 2281 Field Regiment (Ceremonial), and the Prime Minister then addresses the nation.

The ASI’s custody and the work ahead

Since 2003 the fort has been in the ASI’s hands. Legally it is protected as a monument of national importance under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1959, with a 100-metre prohibited zone around it and a further 200-metre zone in which development is controlled, ICOMOS records. Completed ASI projects listed in the nomination dossier include restoring lime plaster and lime concrete flooring and repairing inlay and sandstone steps. The government’s periodic report to UNESCO states that the ASI prepared a conservation management plan for the fort in 2007.

On 23 January 2019 the Prime Minister inaugurated four museums in the former British barracks, named Kranti Mandir. Subjects are Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA, Jallianwala Bagh and the First World War, the rising of 1857, and Indian art over three centuries, with more than 450 works, according to the Press Information Bureau. ThePrint reports that a parliamentary standing committee report of 23 March 2026 noted the curation with appreciation and asked the Ministry of Culture to document the model for other major sites, and that the ministry told the committee all the barracks are now curated.

The next stage concerns the fort’s surroundings. For the road and the railway, ICOMOS suggested a long-term plan to realign them and, in the short term, measures to reduce traffic. A 2025 paper in the journal Heritage, by authors from IIT Roorkee, IIT Kanpur, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the ASI, analysed the sandstone and the black crust on it. PTI’s report says the crust measures about 0.05 millimetres in sheltered places and up to 0.5 millimetres on walls facing heavy traffic, and is mainly gypsum. Regular cleaning and protective coatings are what the authors recommend. An ASI tender of 27 June 2026, reported by ThePrint, covers water-repelling treatment of the wall facing Chandni Chowk, with an estimated material cost of Rs 12,55,708 (about Rs 12.6 lakh).

Visiting

The ASI’s page says the fort is open from sunrise to 9 pm and that children below 15 enter free. Incredible India lists 9:30 am to 4:30 pm and closure on Mondays, so the current notice at the gate is the one to trust.

Visits rose to 2.4 million between 1998 and 1999, according to ICOMOS. In financial year 2024-25 the Ministry of Tourism’s compendium, using ASI data, records 2,884,399 domestic and 79,311 foreign visitors, the fourth-highest domestic figure among ticketed ASI monuments.