An emperor who lost and won an empire
What Bega Begum created was a statement. The Mughals were a young, foreign dynasty in a land of ancient kingdoms, and here they announced, in stone, that they had come to stay.
A fitting end: his life had been a long series of stumbles and recoveries. He inherited the young Mughal empire from his father Babur in 1530 and lost it to the Afghan general Sher Shah Suri ten years later.
Fifteen years in exile: much of it in Persia, at the court of the Safavid Shah.
- Built
- 1560s, finished around 1570
- Built by
- Bega Begum, Humayun's widow
- Open
- Mondays too, unlike the Red Fort
- Allow
- Two hours, half a day with Sunder Nursery
- Best time
- The last two hours of daylight
- Photography
- Personal use welcome, no drones
- Getting there
- Minutes from Nizamuddin station
- A son born on the run: Akbar was born in the desert fort of Umarkot in Sindh, not far from our own Thar.
- Delhi regained: only in 1555 did Humayun win it back, and within a year he was dead.
- The library: the Sher Mandal, where he fell, still stands in the Purana Qila, the old fort a short drive north.
- The widow's vision: Bega Begum, who shared his years of wandering, wanted a tomb unlike anything India had seen. She is said to have paid for it herself and lived near the site.
- The architects: the Persian Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, who had worked in Herat and Bukhara, began in the 1560s. He died before it was finished, and his son Sayyid Muhammad completed it around 1570.
- Persian ideas, Indian hands: what Humayun absorbed in exile met the skills of Indian masons, and Mughal architecture began.
- What followed: Akbar's buildings at Fatehpur Sikri, and three generations later Shah Jahan's architects took the same plan to Agra for the Taj Mahal.
- The dormitory of the Mughals: over three centuries more than a hundred graves filled the platform's chambers, including Humayun's widows and several later emperors.
- Dara Shikoh: Shah Jahan's scholarly eldest son, executed by his brother Aurangzeb in 1659, is buried here.
The last Mughal, the refugees and the restorers
The last emperor's flight: Bahadur Shah Zafar, the figurehead of the 1857 uprising, fled south to the tomb with his family when the British stormed Delhi.
The surrender: a British officer, William Hodson, found him here and took his surrender.
The princes: the next day Hodson shot three of them near the Delhi Gate of the city.
- 1857
- Bahadur Shah Zafar surrenders here
- 1947
- Refugee camps in the gardens
- Garden restored
- Finished 2003
- Restorers
- Aga Khan Trust for Culture with the ASI
- New museum
- Opened July 2024
- Exile: Zafar was taken back to the Red Fort as a prisoner and sent to Rangoon. The dynasty that began its building life in this garden ended its political life here.
- Partition camps: in 1947 the gardens and the nearby Purana Qila became refugee camps for Muslim families waiting to leave for Pakistan.
- Years, not weeks: thousands lived among the monuments for months, and the camps lasted several years. Older Delhi families still remember them.
- Decay: by the late twentieth century the water channels were dry and the paths overgrown.
- The garden returns: from the late 1990s the Aga Khan Trust for Culture worked with the Archaeological Survey of India, finishing the garden in 2003.
- The tomb itself: a long conservation removed tonnes of later concrete from the roof, relaid the old lime plaster and brought back the tilework on the canopies.
- Spreading out: the work moved across the road to the Nizamuddin quarter and next door to Sunder Nursery.
- Why it matters: one of the finest conservation projects in India. You feel the care in every path.
Walking the complex, gate by gate
- First
- Isa Khan's tomb, 1547
- Then
- Bu Halima's garden, Arab Serai
- The reveal
- The west gate
- Barber's tomb
- Around 1590
- Nila Gumbad
- 1620s, just outside the walls
Isa Khan's tomb, the Afghan forerunner
Where: just inside the entrance, to the right.
Who: Isa Khan Niyazi, a nobleman at the court of Sher Shah Suri, the very man who drove Humayun out of India.
- When: 1547, about twenty years before the Mughal tomb.
- What to see: an octagonal tomb with a deep veranda, small domed chhatris, traces of blue and yellow tiles, and a little mosque beside it.
- Why look closely: this is the older Afghan style the Mughals were about to transform.
- A hidden garden: a village grew up inside its walls over the centuries, and the restorers found the original garden beneath it.
Bu Halima's garden and the Arab Serai
Bu Halima: the path passes her small garden, though almost nothing is known about her.
- The Arab Serai: Bega Begum is said to have built it to house the craftsmen who worked on the tomb.
- Ante-rooms: these outer courts were where visitors slowed down, straightened their clothes and prepared to approach.
The west gate and the first view
The gateway: tall, double-storeyed and red sandstone.
- The view: the tomb sits at the far end of a long straight path, its dome floating above the trees, framed by the arch.
- Stop here: this is the view the architects designed, and the moment our guides leave in silence.
The charbagh, a garden of paradise
The plan: a charbagh, divided into four by raised walkways and narrow water channels, each quarter divided again into smaller squares.
The meaning: from Persia and Central Asia, picturing the four rivers of paradise.
- The scale: India had never seen one laid out this large.
- Restored planting: the channels run with water again, with fruit trees and flowering shrubs known from Mughal sources.
- How to walk it: follow a channel rather than the main path, and you see how geometry rules the whole garden.
The great platform
The plinth: vast, red sandstone and lined on every side with arched cells.
- A terrace, not a base: steep steps lead up to it.
- Below: the cells hold many of the graves of the Mughal family.
- Look back: from the edge, the trees, the channels and the gate you came through all line up exactly.
The central chamber
The cenotaph: white marble, a symbolic grave. Humayun's real grave lies in a chamber beneath, as was the Mughal custom.
- The room: high, cool and almost bare, lit through carved stone jalis that filter the light into soft patterns.
- Eight around one: eight smaller chambers surround it, with corridors to walk all the way round.
- The eight paradises: a Persian plan, and the Taj Mahal uses it too.
The Barber's tomb
Where: the south-east corner of the garden, a small, elegant square tomb on a raised platform.
- The name: Nai ka Gumbad, the Barber's tomb, from around 1590.
- Who lies there: nobody knows for certain. The name suggests the emperor's barber, a man trusted with a razor at the imperial throat.
- When to come: a lovely, quiet place to sit at sunset.
The Nila Gumbad, the blue dome
Where: visible from the eastern side of the garden, just outside the walls.
- Who built it: Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana, Akbar's great general and poet, in the 1620s, for a favourite servant.
- The tiles: the restorers brought back their brilliant blue, and in the evening light the dome glows against the sky.
How the tomb works, in plain words
Drawn in two colours: red sandstone trimmed with bands of white marble, with touches of black and yellow stone. It became the signature of early Mughal building.
Marble later: at the Taj the Mughals clad the whole building in marble. Here they were still drawing with it.
The double dome: a high outer shell for effect from far away, and a lower inner ceiling to keep the chamber at a human scale. The space between is hollow.
- Walls
- Red sandstone, white marble bands
- Dome
- Double, on a tall drum
- Canopies
- Chhatris, once blue-tiled
- Plan
- Eight chambers round a centre
- Arches
- A great iwan on each face
- A first for India: the Persians had built such domes for centuries, but none had been raised in India on such a tall neck.
- The skyline it made: that silhouette went on to define Mughal skylines from Lahore to Agra.
- The chhatris: small open pavilions with domed roofs, which every Rajasthani knows from the cenotaphs of our own kings.
- Lost colour: their tops were covered in blue glazed tiles, and the restoration has brought some back.
- The whole style in a glance: a Persian dome with Indian chhatris, imported ideas and local hands working together.
- Almost octagonal: the corners are cut back, and each face has a great central arch, the iwan, flanked by smaller arches.
- Seen in the round: the four sides are almost identical, designed to be viewed from the middle of the garden, not from one front.
- What the Taj borrows: the plinth, the central chamber with eight around it, the four identical faces and the garden.
- The big difference: the Taj stands at the end of its garden, on the river, not in the middle.
- Into Rajasthan: our page on reading Rajasthani architecture traces how these ideas travelled into our palaces.
The new museum beneath the lawns
Shaped like a baori: the galleries descend gently below ground like the stepwells we grew up with in Rajasthan, so they don't compete with the tomb.
A link: they join the tomb complex to Sunder Nursery next door.
- Name
- Humayun's Tomb World Heritage Site Museum
- Opened
- July 2024
- Built by
- Aga Khan Trust with the ASI
- Design
- Sunk below ground like a stepwell
- Allow
- About half an hour
- The story told: Humayun, his tomb, the Sufi quarter of Nizamuddin and centuries of building in this part of Delhi.
- The collection: manuscripts, miniature paintings, astrolabes and architectural fragments.
- Start here: we begin many visits in the museum, so the names and stories are in your head and the tomb can be enjoyed in silence.
- For families: the immersive galleries hold younger attention before a long walk.
- On a hot afternoon: it is blissfully cool.
The best hour and the best season
Afternoon over morning: the approach is from the west gate, so you walk towards the tomb with the sun behind you.
The colours: the sandstone turns from red to rose to gold, the marble goes pink, and parakeets come screaming home to the trees.
The mood: city families picnic on the lawns, students sketch in the arcades, and it feels gentle and local.
- Best hour
- The last two hours of daylight
- Winter light
- From about four o'clock
- Quietest
- Early morning
- Best months
- February and March
- Summer
- The last hour before closing
- Photographers: early morning gives you an emptier garden.
- Comfortable season: October to March.
- November and December: on the worst air days the dome softens into a grey haze. We watch the forecasts and move the visit to a clearer evening.
- February and March: clear skies, flowering trees and the most beautiful light of the year.
- April to June: come only in the last hour before closing.
- Monsoon: the lawns are at their greenest, with dramatic skies between the showers.
- First evening in India: if you land in the morning, rest through the day and come here at four. Our Delhi itinerary is built around that rhythm.
How to visit Humayun's Tomb well
How long: two hours for the tomb and gardens, half a day with the museum and Sunder Nursery.
Take a guide: ours start at Isa Khan's tomb so you see the Afghan style before the Mughal one, and they know the stories of the graves.
Footwear: comfortable shoes, because the paths are long and partly gravel.
- Allow
- Two hours, or half a day
- Shoes
- Comfortable; paths partly gravel
- Steps
- Steep and high to the platform
- Drones
- Not permitted
- Tripods
- May need permission
- Limited mobility: the gardens and paths are largely level, but the platform is reached only by steep steps. We plan a route that enjoys the garden and the views from below.
- Photography: personal use is welcome. Drones are not permitted, and a tripod may need permission.
- Dress: relaxed inside the complex. If you go on to the Nizamuddin shrine, cover shoulders and knees and carry a scarf.
- Warm months: bring water and a hat.
- Winter evenings: a light shawl, because the temperature drops quickly after sunset.
- Mondays: a good day for Humayun's Tomb, since the Red Fort is closed and many guides plan south Delhi instead.
What most visitors miss
- Platform corners
- Four different views
- Side chambers
- Unnamed family graves
- Arch spandrels
- Six-pointed marble stars
- Final half hour
- Reflections in the channels
The view from the platform corners
North: the Nila Gumbad and the green of Sunder Nursery.
- South: the Barber's tomb.
- East: beyond the old line of the river, Delhi's modern skyline.
The graves in the side chambers
Beyond the cenotaph: most people see the central one and leave.
- The corner chambers: they hold other members of the family, plain and unnamed.
- Dara Shikoh: believed to lie in one of them, though nobody can say exactly which.
The stars on the arches
Where to look: the spandrels, the triangles above each curve of the great arches.
- What you'll see: six-pointed stars in white marble.
- What they mean: in Mughal art a symbol of the heavens, not of any one faith, found on many of their early buildings.
The water channels at dusk
- Reflections: as the light fades, the restored channels mirror the sky and the dome.
- Stay late: sit on the edge of one in the final half hour, and the garden empties around you.
What to pair with Humayun's Tomb
- Sunder Nursery
- Next door
- Nizamuddin shrine
- Across Mathura Road
- Lodhi Garden
- A few minutes west
- Purana Qila
- North along Mathura Road
- Qawwali
- Many evenings, especially Thursdays
Sunder Nursery
History: a sixteenth-century garden landscape, used in the early twentieth century as the nursery for the new capital's plants.
- Restored: by the same Aga Khan team, with Mughal tombs, lotus ponds and wide lawns where Delhi families picnic.
- Mornings: full of birdwatchers.
- Why go: the most peaceful hour you can spend in the city.
The Nizamuddin shrine and its qawwali
The saint: Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, the Sufi saint who died in 1325.
The way in: a narrow lane of rose sellers and sweet shops. Leave your shoes and cover your head.
- Amir Khusrau: the poet and musician, the saint's disciple, lies near his tomb.
- Jahanara: Shah Jahan's daughter is buried in a simple open grave nearby.
- Qawwali: on many evenings, especially Thursdays, qawwals sing in the courtyard after sunset.
- For women: they traditionally pray at the marble screens rather than inside the saint's chamber.
- Go with a guide: one who knows the families of the shrine.
The Nizamuddin stepwell and a famous quarrel
The stepwell: built for the saint in the 1320s, inside the shrine complex.
- Work by night: Sultan Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq forbade the workers to labour on it while he needed them for his own fort, so the story goes they worked in the dark.
- The reply: when the sultan threatened the saint, Nizamuddin is said to have answered that Delhi was still far away. The sultan died before he reached it.
- Still said today: Delhi families use Dilli abhi door hai when a plan is far from done.
Chausath Khamba and Ghalib's tomb
- Chausath Khamba: the hall of sixty-four pillars, a white marble tomb of the 1620s for Mirza Aziz Koka, Akbar's foster brother.
- Ghalib: close by lies Mirza Ghalib, the greatest Urdu poet of nineteenth-century Delhi, who died in 1869.
Lodhi Garden
Where: a few minutes' drive west.
- What's there: fifteenth-century tombs of the Sayyid and Lodi sultans among old trees.
- Delhi's morning walk: and the perfect start to a day you end at Humayun's Tomb.
- More ideas: our guide to things to do in Delhi.
The Purana Qila
Where Humayun lived and died: the old fort, north along Mathura Road.
- The Sher Mandal: the small octagonal tower where he fell still stands inside.
- Also inside: Sher Shah Suri's beautiful mosque. It completes the story perfectly.
Where to stay near Humayun's Tomb
The Oberoi, New Delhi: the closest of the great hotels, looking over the trees of the Delhi Golf Club, a few minutes' drive from the tomb.
Ask for: the golf course side. It is quiet, polished and ideal for a first night in India.
- Closest
- The Oberoi, New Delhi
- By Lodhi Garden
- The Lodhi
- Mansingh Road
- The Taj Mahal Hotel
- Chanakyapuri
- The Leela Palace
- For history
- The Imperial, about 15 minutes north
- The Lodhi: beside Lodhi Garden, with spacious rooms and a calm, modern style, close enough to walk to the garden in the morning.
- The Taj Mahal Hotel: on Mansingh Road, a long-standing Delhi favourite.
- The Leela Palace: in Chanakyapuri, a short drive away, for those who want something grander.
- The Imperial: about fifteen minutes north, for travellers who love history over modern polish.
- Compare them: our guide to luxury hotels in Delhi.
What we tell our cousins before they go
Before the Taj: see it first if you possibly can. It makes the Taj easier to understand, and you get the thrill of recognising the same ideas in Agra.
End at sunset: then walk across the road to Nizamuddin for the evening qawwali.
- See it
- Before the Taj Mahal
- End with
- Sunset, then qawwali
- Pair with
- Sunder Nursery
- Train to Agra
- From Hazrat Nizamuddin
- A gentle first day: combine it with Sunder Nursery after a long flight. Neither involves crowds or noise.
- Check the air: in November and December, a bad day calls for the museum and a short garden walk, not two hours outdoors.
- Book your guide: ignore people at the gate offering their services. Book one in advance, with us or through your hotel.
- Small notes: carry them for the shoe keepers and the rose sellers if you go on to the shrine.
- On to Agra: the fast train leaves from Hazrat Nizamuddin station, a few minutes away. A morning at the tomb and an afternoon train makes a lovely day.
- Our route: our Delhi, Jaipur and Agra journey uses exactly that plan.
