Humayun's Tomb

Humayun's Tomb is in Delhi, a big city in India.

It was built for an emperor named Humayun. It has a white dome, red stone walls and a big garden all around.

Humayun's Tomb stands in Delhi, India. A tomb is a building where someone is buried, and this one was built for Humayun, an emperor of the Mughal dynasty, which UNESCO says unified most of the Indian subcontinent.

UNESCO says it was the first garden-tomb on the subcontinent: the tomb stands in a large walled garden. It is also the first of the grand Mughal tombs whose style reached its high point about 80 years later in the Taj Mahal.

UNESCO describes Humayun's Tomb as the first of the grand dynastic mausoleums that became synonymous with Mughal architecture, a style that reached its zenith about 80 years later in the Taj Mahal. The tomb stands in a complex of 27.04 hectares that also holds other 16th-century Mughal garden-tombs, among them the Nila Gumbad, Isa Khan's tomb, Bu Halima's tomb, the Afsarwala tomb and the Barber's Tomb, as well as the Arab Serai, where the craftsmen who built the tomb stayed.

UNESCO calls the Mughal dynasty powerful and says it unified most of the subcontinent; it names the tomb 'the first important example in India' of its kind and the dynasty's symbol.

The garden is split into four parts, with water channels.

There are pools joined by the channels. Tall gateways lead into the garden.

The tomb's garden is a charbagh, a garden divided into four parts, with pools joined by channels. UNESCO says flowing water was an essential part of a Mughal charbagh, and at Humayun's Tomb it came through underground clay pipes, fountains and water channels.

You enter the garden through tall gateways on the south and west sides, and pavilions stand in the middle of the east and north walls.

UNESCO calls the garden a charbagh, a four-quadrant garden, with pools joined by channels, and says that here such a garden setting was used for a mausoleum for the first time, one of the innovations that culminated in the Taj Mahal. Flowing water was essential: underground terracotta pipes, aqueducts, fountains and water channels fed the garden. Lofty gateways open on the south and west, with pavilions at the center of the east and north walls.

The enclosure also contains structures older than Humayun's Tomb, such as the Barber's Tomb and the Nila Gumbad with its garden, and other 16th-century tombs stand nearby, among them Isa Khan's garden-tomb, Bu Halima's garden-tomb and the Afsarwala tomb.

In the photo, the tomb rises behind a green lawn.

You can see its white dome, its many arches and a tall palm tree. A few people are walking in the garden.

The photo, taken in February 2024, shows the tomb from a corner of the garden. You can see the white dome with its pointed tip, the small domed kiosks, the big arches in the middle of each side and the long row of arches in the platform below. A green lawn, a stone channel and palm trees are in front.

Between 2007 and 2013 the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Archaeological Survey of India restored the tomb. Craftsmen removed about a million kilograms of concrete from the roof that 20th-century repairs had added, and restored the tile work on the roof kiosks.

The photo (23 February 2024) looks at the tomb across a corner of the garden: the marble-clad dome and its finial, the chhatris, the large arched recesses and red sandstone façades edged in white, and the arcade of cells in the platform, with a lawn, a stone channel, palms and a few visitors in front.

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture says it completed the tomb's restoration in September 2013, after six years and 200,000 workdays by master craftsmen, working with the Archaeological Survey of India. The work removed a million kilos of concrete from the roof and cement from walls, ceilings and floors, made the dome's stone joints watertight with lime, restored the roof-canopy tiles while reviving tile making, applied 21,000 square meters of lime plaster, and reset 5,400 square meters of terrace sandstone in its original patterns. UNESCO notes that the garden's flowing water was restored in a first phase, from 1997 to 2003.