Red Fort

• 1. Introduction

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  The Red Fort rises from the heart of Old Delhi in red sandstone, its defensive walls stretching 2.41 kilometres around a palace that once governed an empire. Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned it on the 12th of May 1639, after deciding to move his capital from Agra to Delhi. The architect he chose was Ustad Ahmad Lahori, the same man responsible for the Taj Mahal. Construction began in the sacred Islamic month of Muharram, on the 13th of May 1638, and the finished palace opened on the 6th of April 1648. What does it mean that this fort, built to be the centrepiece of Shahjahanabad, has since been plundered by a Persian emperor, stripped by the Marathas, partly demolished by the British, and turned into a military barracks? How did a palace designed for rulers become a symbol carried by a whole nation? And what survives today of the world the Mughals built inside those walls?

• 2. A Palace Built for Emperors

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  Ustad Ahmad Lahori designed the Red Fort on an octagonal plan, with the north-south axis deliberately longer than the east-west one. The walls vary in height from 18 metres on the river-facing side to 33 metres on the city-facing side, reinforced with turrets and bastions across their entire length. The Yamuna River once fed the moats that wrapped around most of those walls. Inside, the fort was originally adorned in red and white, a colour scheme that has since been lost.

  The Lahori Gate, named because it faced the Mughal city of Lahore, served as the main public entrance. Through it, visitors entered the Chhatta Chowk, a domed covered bazaar earlier called the Bazaar-i-Musaqqaf, where silk, jewellery, and goods for the imperial household were sold. A broad north-south street beyond that court divided the fort's military functions to the west from the palace buildings to the east.

  The Diwan-i-Aam, or Hall of Public Audience, stood at the far end of a great inner court measuring 540 feet wide by 420 feet deep. From a raised marble balcony at its rear, the emperor received petitions on matters including taxation, inheritance disputes, and endowments. North of it, reached through the Jalau Khana, sat the Diwan-i-Khas, the Hall of Private Audience, built entirely of white marble inlaid with precious stones. The French traveller Francois Bernier described witnessing the famed Peacock Throne there in the 17th century. The hall's two outer arches carried an inscription by the Persian poet Amir Khusrow: "If heaven can be on the face of the earth, it is this, it is this, it is this."

  The emperor's private apartments, the Khas Mahal, were cooled by a channel called the Nahr-i-Bihisht, meaning the River of Paradise. That same channel fed the marble pool at the centre of the Rang Mahal, the Palace of Colors, which served as residence for the emperor's wives and mistresses. The imperial baths, the hammam, occupied three domed apartments where legend held that rose-water once flowed from the taps. Emperor Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan's successor, added the Moti Masjid, a small three-domed white marble mosque built in 1659 as his private place of worship, and also constructed barbicans in front of the two main gates. Shah Jahan reportedly described the effect of Aurangzeb's barbican on the Lahori Gate as a veil drawn across the face of a beautiful woman.

• 3. Plunder and Fragmentation

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  In 1739, the Persian emperor Nadir Shah marched on Delhi with an army the Mughal forces, numbering around 200,000 soldiers, could not stop. After his decisive victory he entered the Red Fort, seized its accumulated treasures, and took the legendary Peacock Throne back to Persia. He stayed three months, and the city he left behind was severely damaged. The Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah, who reigned in the aftermath, found himself ruling an empire reduced to a shadow.

  The treaty of 1752 recognised a new political reality: the Marathas became the designated protectors of the throne in Delhi. In 1760, facing the advancing armies of Ahmed Shah Durrani, the Marathas made a desperate financial calculation. They stripped the silver ceiling of the Diwan-i-Khas and melted it down to fund their defence of the city. Their loss at the third battle of Panipat in 1761 opened Delhi to Durrani's raid. A decade later the Marathas returned, and the commander Mahadaji Shinde restored the exiled Emperor Shah Alam II to the throne.

  In 1764, the Jat ruler of Bharatpur, Maharaja Jawahar Singh, attacked Delhi and captured the Red Fort on the 5th of February 1765. Two days later, after extracting tribute, he withdrew his forces and took the Mughal throne itself; it now sits in the palace at Deeg. The fort's doors were also carried away to the Lohagarh Fort of Bharatpur.

  In 1783, Sikh Misls commanded by Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, Jassa Singh Ramgarhia, and Baghel Singh Dhaliwal entered Delhi and the Red Fort with a consolidated force of 40,000 troops. They ultimately agreed to leave and reinstate Shah Alam II, but extracted a condition: the construction of seven Sikh gurdwaras in Delhi, including the Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib in Chandni Chowk. In 1788, Ghulam Kadir, grandson of the Rohilla leader Najib ad-Dawlah, looted Delhi, killed female members of the Mughal royal family, and imprisoned Shah Alam II. Mahadaji Shinde's men tracked Kadir to his hiding place at Ghosgad in Rohilkhand, captured him, and had him beheaded. As a result the Maratha flag flew from the Red Fort until 1803, when the British defeat of Daulat Rao Sindhia at the Battle of Delhi ended Maratha control of the city.

• 4. The Last Mughal and British Rule

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  Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor to occupy the Red Fort, became the figurehead of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, in which the residents of Shahjahanabad took part. Despite its commanding walls, the fort was not the scene of any military engagements during the uprising. Bahadur left the fort on the 17th of September 1857, was captured by British forces, brought back, tried in 1858, and exiled to Rangoon on the 7th of October of that year.

  The British response to the rebellion was systematic and thorough. Eighty percent of the fort's structures were demolished. The stone screen that once connected the pavilions along the river-facing facade was torn down. All furniture was removed or destroyed. The harem apartments, servants' quarters, and gardens were flattened, and a line of stone barracks was erected in their place. The side arcades and the central tank of the Red Fort court were also demolished. Only the marble buildings on the east side of the imperial enclosure survived, though they were damaged in the process. The baoli, or step-well, was among the few inner structures the British left standing; its chambers were converted into a prison.

  The fort remained a military garrison, and it was within these walls that the first of the INA Trials took place, between November and December 1945. Three officers of the Indian National Army, General Shah Nawaz Khan, Colonel Prem Kumar Sahgal, and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, were held in the baoli during those proceedings.

  Lord Curzon, who served as Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, initiated restoration work, including rebuilding sections of the walls and reviving the gardens with an updated watering system. It was during this period, in 1913, that the Red Fort was designated a monument of national importance.

• 5. A Nation's Symbolic Stage

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  On the 15th of August 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, raised the Indian national flag above the Lahori Gate. The gesture marked the end of British rule and gave the fort a new civic meaning it had never held before. Every year since, on Independence Day, the Prime Minister hoists the national tricolour at the main gate and delivers a speech broadcast nationwide from the fort's ramparts.

  The significance of that ritual was tested sharply on the 26th of January 2021, when protesting farmers breached the fort during the Republic Day demonstrations. A farmer climbed a flagpole in front of the fort and hoisted the Nishan Sahib pennant. The fort sustained damage in the clashes between protesters and police before the site was cleared.

  Security around the Red Fort has become an elaborate operation in its own right. On the eve of each Independence Day, Delhi Police and paramilitary forces are deployed throughout the surrounding neighbourhoods. National Security Guard sharpshooters are stationed on high-rise buildings near the site. The airspace above the fort is declared a no-fly zone for the celebration, and safe houses are maintained nearby in case the Prime Minister or other dignitaries need to be evacuated.

  The fort had already been the target of a terrorist attack on the 22nd of December 2000, when six Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives killed two soldiers and a civilian in what the news media described as an attempt to derail India-Pakistan peace talks then underway. The attack underscored how completely the Red Fort had shifted from being a seat of Mughal authority to a node in contemporary national politics.

• 6. Architecture and Preservation

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  The World Heritage Convention, which granted the Red Fort Complex UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2007, characterised the fort as embodying the zenith of Mughal creativity. The fort spans 254.67 acres, or 103.06 hectares, and the World Heritage citation notes its synthesis of Islamic palace structure with Persian and Timurid architectural traditions. The Kohinoor diamond was reportedly among the furnishings; the artwork integrated Persian, European, and Indian artistic traditions into what became known as the Shahjahani style.

  The fort's condition today is uneven. Some structures retain their original decorative elements while others show the effects of centuries of conflict and neglect. The inlaid marble floral designs in some buildings have been stripped by looters. The water features, once extensive, are now dry. The mosque and the hammam are closed to visitors, accessible only by looking through glass windows or marble latticework. Walkways within the complex are deteriorating.

  Since the late 20th century, environmental pollution has added another layer of damage. Research published in September 2025, conducted through Italo-Indian studies, found that repeated air pollution events have produced tarry black crusts on the fort's walls, caused by particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and toxic metals including lead, copper, and zinc. The fort's colour has shifted from red to black across significant sections.

  A significant portion of the Red Fort remained under the control of the Indian Army until the 22nd of December 2003, when it was transferred to the Archaeological Survey of India. In 2009, the Supreme Court directed the preparation of a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, and the Archaeological Survey of India announced that plan the same year. Four museums were inaugurated in 2019 in the colonial-era barracks: Barrack B1 covering the 1857 War of Independence, Barrack B2 commemorating the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Barrack B3 focused on Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army, and Barrack B4, called Drishyakala, a collaboration with the Delhi Art Gallery showcasing Indian art. In April 2018, the Dalmia Group adopted the fort under the government's Adopt A Heritage scheme through a contract worth 25 crores of rupees for five years, a move that prompted public outcry and the trending of the hashtag #IndiaOnSale on Twitter. The Indian National Congress demanded suspension of that agreement the following month.