Almost everyone who travels to this country for architecture does the same route in the same order: first the famous building, and then, if there is time, everything else. It is a perfectly reasonable way to organise a trip and also the least comprehensible, because it puts the conclusion before the argument.
01 How it fits you
The commission dates from 1558 and was signed by Bega Begum, Humayun's first wife and chief consort, who paid for it entirely herself: one and a half million rupees. She personally chose the architects, Mirak Mirza Ghiyas and his son Sayyid Muhammad, of Persian origin. Construction ran from 1565 to 1572.
02 What was invented here
Three things, and all three would be repeated afterwards. The first is the garden: twelve hectares of quadripartite layout of Persian origin, divided by paved walks and two crossing water channels, and subdivided into thirty-two beds. It was the first at that scale in the subcontinent.
The second is the relationship between the building and that grid: the mausoleum sits neither in a corner nor at the far end but exactly in the centre, on a plinth 91 metres wide, and stands 47 metres tall, with a dome of 42.5 metres topped by a 6-metre brass finial. The third is the material: red sandstone used at a scale not seen before.
03 What it will cost you
The first friction is the city. The complexes worth seeing are spread across an enormous metropolitan area, and traffic turns any journey into forty minutes or an hour. The metro helps far more than is usually said, but it is worth planning one long journey a day and not two.
The second is the calendar, and it is harsh. These complexes are open-air, with gardens that have hardly any continuous shade, and from April to June average highs run from 36.8 to 41.2 degrees. In that stretch the visit shrinks to the first two hours of the day, and that leaves out half the programme.
And the third is best said plainly: from November to January, the city's air quality degrades badly. Those are the best-temperature months for walking in a garden, and also the ones in which a full day outdoors may not be a good idea if you have asthma or respiratory allergies. Check the day's index.
04 How I would build these days
Three days in February, with the mornings reserved. Day one: the garden-tomb complex, entering at opening time and staying a good three hours; first the large mausoleum, then the lesser tombs inside the same wall, and at the end back to the garden axis to look at the whole from the far end.
Day two: the southern complexes, with the archaeological site where the iron pillar stands, which needs another whole morning. Day three: the twentieth-century city and its avenues, better covered by car or metro, and slack in the afternoon to return to whatever interested you most. Three days are enough and no more.
05 The verdict
If you are going to see the famous building anyway, starting here is the best decision you can make and costs practically nothing: a few hours, a cheap ticket and a quiet site. Seeing the rehearsal first and the masterpiece afterwards turns the second visit into a reading rather than a photograph.
If what you want is one iconic image and you do not care where it comes from, this city will feel like a big, hot, traffic-choked formality before you get to the good part. The deciding question is simple: are you interested in the building or in the idea? If it is the latter, this is where the story starts.
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