A city built on a saint's promise
The prophecy: Sheikh Salim Chishti, a Sufi of the Chishti order, told Akbar he would have three sons.
The birth: in 1569 Akbar's Rajput queen from Amer gave birth at Sikri to a boy. He was named Salim after the saint, and he later ruled as the emperor Jahangir.
- The saint
- Sheikh Salim Chishti, died 1572
- The heir
- Prince Salim, born here in 1569
- His mother
- Mariam-uz-Zamani, princess of Amer
- The name
- Fatehpur, city of victory, after Gujarat in 1573
- Left
- Around 1585, when the court moved to Lahore
- The city: from 1571 Akbar built a new capital around the saint's home, with a great mosque, palaces, offices, workshops and an artificial lake for water.
- The victory: in 1573 Akbar conquered Gujarat, and the town took the name Fatehpur, the city of victory.
- The court: for about fourteen years ambassadors, Jesuit priests from Goa, painters, poets and generals climbed this ridge to find the emperor.
- The departure: around 1585 Akbar moved his court to Lahore to deal with trouble on the north-west frontier, and never made Sikri his capital again.
- Why that is a gift: nothing much was built over it afterwards, so you walk through the rooms of a single reign, in the shape Akbar left them.
Before you go, the essentials
Book a registered guide: self-appointed guides on the steps are persistent, and their stories are often more colourful than true. We send a guide who meets you at the car.
Arrive early: the courtyards are in shadow and the stone is cool in the first two hours. By noon in April the ridge is fierce.
- Royal complex
- Protected monument, ticketed
- Religious complex
- Active shrine, shoes off
- Getting up
- Shuttle or short walk from the car park
- Dress
- Shoulders and knees covered for the shrine
- Bring
- Water, a hat, slip-off shoes, small notes
- Wear slip-off shoes and socks: you walk barefoot across the mosque courtyard, and its stone can be very hot or very cold.
- Carry small notes: for the shoe keeper and for an offering at the tomb if you wish. Nobody should pressure you into buying an expensive chadar, a cloth offering.
- Women may cover their heads: at the tomb of the saint. A light scarf in your bag is enough.
- Bring water and a hat: there is very little shade on the ridge, and few places to buy anything inside.
- Mobility: the paving is uneven and there are steps between courts. Tell us in advance and we plan a gentler route.
The royal city, court by court
The Diwan-i-Am, the hall of public audience
- What it was: a huge courtyard ringed by colonnades, with a raised pavilion where the emperor heard petitions and gave justice.
- Why start here: it is usually quiet in the first hour, and your guide can explain the layout of the whole city from its centre.
The Diwan-i-Khas and its single pillar
From outside: a plain two-storeyed block with kiosks at the corners.
- Inside: one carved pillar rises from the floor and opens into a great round capital of brackets, from which four stone walkways run to the corners of the gallery.
- The reading: many believe Akbar sat at the centre while scholars and ministers debated around him. It is easy to read the room as a picture of how he liked to rule.
- Look closely: the brackets mix motifs from several traditions.
The treasury and the Khwabgah
- The treasury: a building beside the Diwan-i-Khas that guides call Ankh Michauli, after a game of hide and seek. It is more likely to have held valuables than games.
- The Khwabgah: Akbar's private apartments, the house of dreams, beside the tank of Anup Talao. Fragments of painting survive inside.
Anup Talao and the Pachisi court
- Anup Talao: a square ornamental tank with a stone platform at its centre, reached by four narrow causeways. Tradition says Tansen sang here for Akbar.
- The Pachisi court: a courtyard paved as a giant board for pachisi, the ancestor of ludo. The story that Akbar played it with living pieces is told at every visit.
The Panch Mahal, five storeys of air
The shape: an open pavilion of five storeys, each smaller than the last, from 84 pillars on the ground floor to four under the little domed kiosk on top, 176 in all.
- What it was for: catching the breeze, and letting the ladies of the court look out over the city behind screens that have long gone.
- Look at the pillars: on the lower floors the carving changes from one column to the next.
The house of the Turkish Sultana
- Small and astonishing: a single pavilion whose walls are covered in carved trees, birds and vines.
- Why it matters: the stone is worked so finely it looks like wood. It is the best place on the ridge to understand the masons' skill.
The palace of Mariam-uz-Zamani
The largest residence: built around a big inner courtyard, closed to the outside world.
- The style: carved pillars, brackets and balconies that recall the temples and havelis of Gujarat and Rajasthan, and patches of turquoise glazed tile on the roof.
- The name you will hear: guides often call it Jodha Bai's palace. We explain that name below.
Birbal's house
- The tradition: named after Akbar's witty Brahmin minister, the hero of a whole genre of folk tales.
- The doubt: historians doubt he lived here, and it may have been built for royal women. Its carving is as fine as any in the city.
Hiran Minar and the old road
Below the ridge: a round tower studded with stone projections shaped like elephant tusks.
- The stories: tradition links it to a favourite elephant of Akbar. Others see a lookout over the hunting grounds and the lake that once lay beyond.
- Why go down: few visitors do, and on a clear winter morning the view back up to the palaces is one of the best on the site.
The Jama Masjid, the great gate and the saint's tomb
The Jama Masjid
Among the first buildings: Akbar raised the great mosque early, around one of the largest mosque courtyards in India.
- Look inside the prayer hall: the central bay is painted and inlaid with intricate patterns.
- Fridays: the mosque is busier at the midday prayer. Visit earlier or later and give worshippers room.
The tomb of Sheikh Salim Chishti
A white jewel in a red courtyard: the saint died in 1572 and Akbar built his tomb here. Its white marble facing was probably added in Jahangir's reign.
- The jali: the marble screens are among the finest in India, carved into geometric lattices so thin the light passes through like lace.
- The brackets: serpentine brackets under the eaves, each cut from a single piece of stone. Give them a long look.
The threads of hope
The custom: pilgrims of every faith tie red and yellow threads to the marble screens and make a wish, often for a child, as Akbar did.
- The return: when the wish comes true, tradition says you come back to untie a thread.
- What you will see: women from villages across Braj and Rajasthan in their best clothes, and on many days qawwali sung in the courtyard.
The tomb of Islam Khan
- Next door: a larger red sandstone tomb of one of the saint's descendants, crowned with small domed kiosks.
- Often skipped: it is worth two minutes for the contrast with the white tomb beside it.
The Buland Darwaza
The gate of magnificence: completed around 1575 to mark the conquest of Gujarat, it rises about 54 metres from the ground below its steps.
- The inscription: a Persian line repeats a saying attributed to Jesus, that the world is a bridge to cross and not a place to build a house.
- The best view: walk out through it and look back up from the bottom of the steps. Only then do you feel its size.
The people who met on the ridge
In 1575 Akbar built a hall here called the Ibadat Khana, the house of worship. It does not survive, but what happened in it is well recorded. Sunni and Shia scholars, Hindu pandits, Jain monks, Zoroastrian priests and Jesuit fathers argued before the emperor, often fiercely. Out of those nights grew his idea of sulh-i-kul, peace with all.
Abul Fazl: the scholar who wrote the great chronicle of the reign, the Akbarnama.
- Raja Todar Mal: the finance minister whose land revenue system outlived the empire.
- Birbal: the minister whose quick wit became the hero of folk tales that Indian children still read.
- Tansen: the singer said to be able to light lamps with a raga. His tomb is in Gwalior.
- Raja Man Singh of Amber: the Kachwaha general who led imperial armies across India and built the oldest parts of Amber Fort with what he earned.
- The Ajmer pilgrimages: Akbar's devotion to the Chishti saints was personal. After Salim's birth he is said to have walked from Agra to the shrine at Ajmer Sharif.
Jodha Bai, the name and the history
The marriage: in 1562 Raja Bharmal of Amber gave his daughter in marriage to Akbar. The alliance made the Kachwahas the Mughals' closest Rajput partners.
Her recorded title: she is remembered as Mariam-uz-Zamani, and she was the mother of Jahangir.
- The popular name: Jodha is a later popular usage, spread by stories, films and television, and historians do not find it in the records of Akbar's reign.
- The palace: the building called Jodha Bai's palace is the great residence for royal women. Whether she lived in it is tradition, not proof.
- Why it matters to us: she grew up in Amer, near our own families' homes. Whatever her name, this ridge is where Rajasthan and the Mughal court were closest.
- The longer story: our journal pieces on Akbar and Jodha and on Mughal and Rajput history go further.
How to read the red city
One stone: almost everything is built from the red sandstone of the ridge itself, quarried on the spot. That is why the city has one colour and one texture.
The colours of the day: deep rust at sunrise, pale pink at noon, glowing like coals in the last light.
- Beams, not arches: much of the building is trabeate, flat stone beams on pillars, the old Indian way, rather than the arches of Persia.
- Brackets: heavy carved stone supports under balconies and eaves. Look up and you will see hundreds of them, few identical.
- Chhajjas: the deep stone eaves that throw shade over walls and windows, essential on this hot ridge.
- Chhatris: small domed kiosks on rooftops, a Rajput favourite that became a Mughal one.
- Jali: pierced stone screens, from the rough lattices of the palaces to the lace of the saint's tomb.
- Who carved it: Akbar's planners drew on Persian and Central Asian ideas, but much of the craftsmanship came from Indian masons, including traditions from Gujarat and Rajasthan. Our architecture guide explains the vocabulary.
Why the city was left behind
Water: the ridge has no river. Akbar's engineers dammed a valley to make a lake north-west of the palaces and built tanks and channels to lift water uphill. In dry years the lake shrank.
War: in 1585 trouble on the north-west frontier took Akbar to Lahore, and he stayed there for well over a decade.
- Changing needs: by the time the empire's centre moved back towards Agra, the emperor was older and the city was no longer needed.
- Not destroyed: the city was simply left. The villagers of Sikri moved into its edges, as they still live today.
- The result: no romantic ruin, no fallen domes. Sit in the Diwan-i-Khas on a winter morning and you feel the court has just stepped out.
The best hour and the best season
October and November: clear skies, warm stone and comfortable mornings. Our favourite months.
December and January: fog can hide the ridge until mid-morning, then the sun warms the stone quickly. Bring a jacket for the first hour.
- Best hour
- As the site opens, or the last two hours of light
- Best months
- October to March
- Winter mornings
- Often foggy until mid-morning
- Summer
- Leave before eleven
- Monsoon
- Green fields, slippery stone
- February and March: bright and pleasant, and busy with visitors. Arrive early.
- April to June: fierce by late morning. If you must come in summer, arrive as the site opens and leave before eleven.
- July to September: dramatic skies and green fields around the ridge, but the stone gets slippery in rain. Carry an umbrella.
- Afternoon visits: if you are driving from Jaipur towards Agra, the late afternoon light on the sandstone is lovely and many coaches have gone.
What most visitors miss
The ceilings and brackets: the best carving at Fatehpur Sikri is above your head. Look up in every room.
The Turkish Sultana's house: the most delicate stone in the city, and often empty.
- The turquoise tiles: on the roof of the palace of Mariam-uz-Zamani, a surprise of colour on a red city.
- The Badshahi Darwaza: the king's gate on the east side of the mosque courtyard, the one Akbar is said to have used, quieter than the Buland Darwaza.
- The Hiran Minar: below the ridge, with the best view back up to the palaces.
- The village: Sikri still lives at the foot of the walls. A short walk with your guide shows you its lanes, its tea stalls and its stone workers.
- The view from the Buland Darwaza steps: sit for five minutes at the bottom and watch pilgrims climb. It tells you how big the gate really is.
Fitting Sikri into your journey
On the Agra to Jaipur drive
- The classic day: leave Agra after breakfast, Sikri by mid-morning, the stepwell at Abhaneri in the afternoon, Jaipur by dusk.
- The route in detail: our note on Agra to Jaipur via Abhaneri.
On a Friday in Agra
- The Taj is closed: Fatehpur Sikri is open, so it fills the day perfectly.
- Read first: why the Taj Mahal closes on Fridays.
With Bharatpur's birds
- Close together: Bharatpur and the Keoladeo wetland are a short drive away.
- The pairing: Sikri in the morning, the birds in the late afternoon, a night in Bharatpur and a dawn ride in the park.
In a ready-made journey
- Golden Triangle: our classic Golden Triangle builds Sikri into the road day.
- With Rajasthan: so does Rajasthan with the Taj Mahal.
Where to stay and what to eat
In Agra: The Oberoi Amarvilas, where every room faces the Taj, or the garden-wrapped ITC Mughal. Leave after breakfast and reach Sikri by mid-morning.
In Bharatpur: a heritage hotel near the bird park, for birders and slow travellers.
- In Jaipur, the night after: Rambagh Palace or another of the city's palace hotels.
- Snacks at the foot of the ridge: fresh samosas, hot tea and, in winter, roasted peanuts and gajak, a sweet of jaggery and sesame. Fine if the stall is busy and frying fresh.
- Lunch: we plan it in Agra, Bharatpur or a good highway hotel, and carry water, fruit and a flask of chai in the car.
- Shopping: the stalls by the Buland Darwaza sell soapstone boxes and so-called marble. Some soapstone is local and charming. Real inlay workshops are in Agra. Our shopping guide explains the difference.
Who will love Fatehpur Sikri
History lovers: this is the best place in India to stand inside one emperor's world, unaltered.
Architecture lovers: the meeting of Persian planning and Indian masonry is clearer here than anywhere else.
- Photographers: red stone, deep shadows and endless repeating pillars.
- Families: children love the giant pachisi board, the tusked tower and the wish threads.
- Less suited to: anyone who dislikes heat, uneven stone or ruins without furniture. Come early and keep it short.
- Our honest view: if you are driving between Agra and Jaipur, skipping it would be a shame. Read our full page on Fatehpur Sikri for more.