Agra: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

Now in Agra--:--:--

--°

Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 giving birth to her fourteenth child, and Shah Jahan spent twenty-two years and the revenue of an empire on her tomb. What most people do not know is that almost nothing about the building is decorative: the minarets lean outwards on purpose, the calligraphy grows larger as it rises, the graves you see are false, and the one asymmetrical element in the entire complex was added by accident of politics. Half a day, and it is closed every Friday.

Live camera

A short history of Agra

In the early 16th century Sultan Sikandar Lodi made Agra his capital, and after him it was one of the capitals of the Mughal Empire. In 1565 Emperor Akbar began building the Red Fort here. After the wife of Emperor Shah Jahan, Mumtaz Mahal, died in 1631, he built the Taj Mahal in her memory, and the construction work lasted about twenty years. In 1648 Shah Jahan moved the capital to Delhi, and at the end of his life he was held in Agra Fort by his son, from where he could see his wife's tomb across the river. In 1983 the Taj Mahal was declared a World Heritage Site.

The ten best sights in Agra

1
Taj Mahal
1,300 rupees for foreigners, and closed every Friday. Verified 10/2026
2
Taj east gate
The quietest of the three gates, and the ticket office is beside it
3
Taj west gate
The busiest; this is where the coach groups arrive
4
Taj south gate
Opens later than the others and is the one the Taj Ganj guesthouses use
5
Taj Ganj
The lanes south of the Taj, built in the 1630s to house the workmen
6
Mehtab Bagh
The moonlight garden across the river, and the sunset view of the Taj
7
Taj Nature Walk
A scrub park east of the Taj, and the cheapest view of the dome there is
8
Agra Fort
650 rupees for foreigners, 600 on Friday, free under 15. Verified 10/2026
9
Jahangiri Mahal
Akbar’s palace inside the fort, and the one part built for the women of the court
10
Khas Mahal
Shah Jahan’s white marble palace, and the Taj is visible from its terrace

sleepntripFree with every roomThree audio walks in every city

A guide in your headphones, stop after stop.

To the walks

What is an audio walk?

Tours in Agra →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Agra:

Free walking tours in Agra

The Taj, and the things nobody tells you

The great gate · The Quranic calligraphy inlaid around the gateway arch is not one size: the letters get progressively larger towards the top so that from the ground they appear uniform. Amanat Khan, the calligrapher, is the only craftsman who signed his work anywhere on the Taj. And the gate is deliberately built so the tomb is hidden until you are through it.
The four minarets · Each one leans very slightly outwards, away from the dome. That is not subsidence: it was designed so that if an earthquake brought them down they would fall away from the tomb rather than onto it. The Taj sits on a well foundation of timber and rubble shafts sunk into the riverbank, which is kept damp by the Yamuna — if the river dries, the foundation is a problem.
The main chamber · The two cenotaphs under the dome are empty. The real graves are in a sealed crypt directly below, and the whole complex is perfectly symmetrical except for one thing: Shah Jahan’s cenotaph, which is larger and set to one side. He had not planned to be buried here — his son Aurangzeb deposed him and put him in beside his wife, breaking the symmetry of the building his father built.
The inlay · The white marble came from Makrana in Rajasthan, four hundred kilometres away, and the inlaid stones came from much further: jasper from Punjab, jade from China, turquoise from Tibet, lapis from Afghanistan, sapphire from Sri Lanka, carnelian from Arabia. Each flower in the pietra dura can hold forty or more separate pieces. Put a torch against one in the side rooms and the stones glow.
Mehtab Bagh · The garden directly across the river was laid out so that the Taj would be seen reflected in its central pool, from the correct distance and on the central axis — it is the viewing platform the building was designed for. It silted over and was lost for centuries; excavation in the 1990s found the pool and the paths exactly on the Taj’s axis.
Taj Ganj · The lanes immediately south of the complex were built in the 1630s as a town for the workforce — around twenty thousand workers and a thousand elephants were employed on the Taj, and they needed housing, markets and caravanserais. Four of those original market squares still exist in the street plan, and the neighbourhood has been there as long as the tomb has.

The fort, and the man who watched from it

Agra Fort is not a fort with a palace in it — it is a walled city. Akbar rebuilt it in red sandstone from 1565 with two and a half kilometres of wall, and his grandson faced parts of it in white marble a century later. The reason to come is one window: Shah Jahan was deposed by his son in 1658 and held here for eight years, and from the tower he was held in the Taj is visible across the river. Two hours, and a quarter of the fort is open — the rest is still army.

The walls · Two and a half kilometres of red sandstone wall, twenty-one metres high, with a double moat that held water and, according to Mughal accounts, crocodiles. Akbar employed four thousand men for eight years on it from 1565. Only about a quarter of the interior is open to visitors; the Indian Army still occupies the rest, which is why the plan on the ticket shows a route rather than a map.
Jahangiri Mahal · The largest surviving building from Akbar’s own time in the fort, and the detail worth looking for is in the brackets and beams: they are carved in a Gujarati and Rajput Hindu idiom rather than a Persian one, because Akbar employed Hindu craftsmen and let them build in their own language. The huge stone bath outside it was cut from a single block for Jahangir.
Khas Mahal · Shah Jahan demolished a large part of Akbar’s red sandstone fort and rebuilt it in white marble — this palace and its two flanking pavilions are what he put there. The curved Bengali roofs on the pavilions are a Mughal import from Bengal, and the reason the marble here is cool to the touch even in May is that water channels ran under the floors.
Musamman Burj · The octagonal tower at the end of the marble terrace is where Shah Jahan was confined by Aurangzeb from 1658 until his death in 1666, and the Taj is visible from it across a bend in the river. His daughter Jahanara chose to be imprisoned with him. He died looking at it, and his body was taken down the river by boat to be buried inside it.
Diwan-i-Khas · The hall of private audience, where the emperor received ambassadors, and the pietra dura inlay on its columns is the same technique as the Taj and by the same workshops. Two black marble thrones stand on the terrace outside; the cracks in one of them are said locally to date from a Jat raider sitting on it in 1764, which is unproven and widely repeated.
Jama Masjid · Built in 1648 and paid for by Jahanara, Shah Jahan’s eldest daughter — the same woman who chose to be imprisoned with her father ten years later. It faces the fort across what used to be an open square; the British drove the railway through that square in the 1870s, which is why the mosque and the fort are now separated by a station.

The city that was abandoned

In 1571 Akbar began building an entire imperial capital forty kilometres west of Agra, and by 1585 he had left it. Fatehpur Sikri is the most complete sixteenth-century city anywhere in the Islamic world precisely because nobody lived in it afterwards — no later building, no rebuilding, no modern town on top. The reason usually given for abandoning it is water. Half a day, and the bus from Idgah takes about an hour.

Buland Darwaza · Fifty-four metres high and the tallest gateway in the world, added about 1575 to mark Akbar’s conquest of Gujarat. The inscription on it is attributed to Jesus: the world is a bridge, pass over it but do not build your house on it. Akbar put a saying of Christ on the gate of his mosque, which is the clearest single statement of what his religious policy was.
Salim Chishti’s tomb · The whole city exists because of this man: Akbar had no surviving son, the Sufi saint Salim Chishti predicted he would have three, and when the first was born Akbar named him Salim and built his capital on the saint’s hill. The marble screens around the tomb are carved from single slabs, and women still tie threads to them asking for a child.
Diwan-i-Khas · One square room with a single enormous column in the middle, whose carved capital spreads into a circular platform connected to the corners by four stone bridges. The emperor sat on that platform and his counsellors stood at the corners — and this is where Akbar held the debates of his Ibadat Khana, bringing Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian and Jesuit scholars into one argument.
Panch Mahal · Five storeys, each smaller than the one below, open on every side, with eighty-four columns on the ground floor and no two of them carved alike. It has no walls at all, because it is a wind tower: the women of the court sat in it in the heat and the breeze moved through it. Screens once filled the openings so they could see out and not be seen.
Jodha Bai’s palace · The largest residence in the city, and its plan is a Hindu courtyard house rather than a Persian one — a square court with rooms on four sides, blue glazed Persian tiles on the roofs, and niches for oil lamps on the walls. It is traditionally called the palace of Akbar’s Rajput wife, which no contemporary source confirms, and the name has stuck anyway.
Hiran Minar · A round tower studded all over with stone projections carved as elephant tusks, standing outside the walls, and local tradition says it was built over the grave of Akbar’s favourite elephant. The other explanation is that it was a mile marker for the imperial road, or a lamp tower for caravans. Nobody knows, and all three explanations are given on site.

sleepntripRoad and rail routesEvery night on the road, our hotel

Whole routes, with a room up to $80 at every stop.

To the routes

Getting to Agra and getting around

Agra Cantt station · The main station; the Gatimaan Express from Delhi takes 100 minutes
Agra Fort station · The older station, closer to the old city and to the fort
Idgah bus stand · Buses to Fatehpur Sikri leave from here, about an hour each way
ISBT · The long-distance terminal at Transport Nagar, 7 kilometres out

Cheap eats in Agra

Agra has one sweet that is entirely its own and a street food tradition that is Mughal in origin: petha, a translucent candy made from ash gourd that is sold nowhere else in this form, and the bedai and jalebi breakfast that the old city eats standing at six in the morning. The Taj Ganj restaurants are priced for visitors; the old city near the Jama Masjid is priced for Agra. Twenty to two hundred rupees.

Petha · Buy it in the old city, not at the Taj gates
Bedai and jalebi · Six to ten in the morning only; under 60 rupees
Mughlai kitchens · Ask for nihari; it is cooked overnight
Dalmoth · Sold by weight; it keeps for weeks
Sheroes Hangout · No price list; you decide what to pay
Sanjay Place · Four kilometres out; a quarter of Taj prices
Chaat at Bijli Ghar · Evenings; nothing over 50 rupees
Rooftop restaurants · Pay for the view, eat elsewhere

Museums in Agra

Agra has almost no museums and an extraordinary number of monuments, and that is the right way round: the buildings here are the primary documents. The four that matter after the Taj and the fort are the tomb that was the Taj’s prototype, the tomb with no dome at all, the only tiled building in India, and the oldest Mughal garden in the country. All four are cheap and almost empty.

Itimad-ud-Daulah · 310 rupees for foreigners; almost empty. Verified 10/2026
Akbar’s Tomb · Ten kilometres out; the deer in the garden are tame
Chini ka Rauza · No ticket, no guard; mostly fallen
Ram Bagh · The oldest Mughal garden in India; cheap and empty
Mariam’s Tomb · A kilometre from Akbar; almost nobody goes
The Red Taj · In the Catholic cemetery; ask at the gate
Akbar’s Church · 1599; rebuilt after 1635
St John’s College · A working college; term time only

Nature and day trips near Agra

Agra sits on the Yamuna in a flat dry plain, and the nature here is water and what water made: a wetland fifty kilometres west that was dug as a duck-shooting reserve for a maharaja and is now a UNESCO bird site, the ravines of the Chambal where gharial crocodiles survive, and the river itself, which is now so reduced that it is a conservation problem for the Taj.

Keoladeo National Park · 52 kilometres west; cycle rickshaws inside
The Yamuna · Best seen from Mehtab Bagh at sunset
Chambal ravines · 60 kilometres south; a guided boat
Taj Nature Walk · Almost free; the cheapest clear view
The Taj Trapezium Zone · 10,400 square kilometres; 1996
Bateshwar · The cattle fair is October–November
Paliwal Park · Free; the city goes there at six
Guru ka Tal · Free; cover your head at the door

Holy places in Agra

Agra is where a Muslim emperor held formal debates between Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and Jesuits and then invented a religion of his own, and where his grandson built the most expensive Islamic building ever made. Within forty kilometres you also have a Sufi shrine that women still visit for children, a Sikh gurdwara in a Mughal stepwell, and Krishna’s birthplace fifty kilometres north.

Salim Chishti’s tomb · A working shrine; cover your head
Fatehpur Sikri Jama Masjid · Free; a separate ticket from the palace
Diwan-i-Khas and the debates · In the palace ticket; the column is the point
Mankameshwar Temple · In a lane by the Jama Masjid; shoes off
Guru ka Tal · Free; a langar kitchen operates daily
Dayal Bagh and Soami Bagh · Still being carved after 120 years
Mathura · 50 kilometres north; security at the temple
Vrindavan · Six kilometres from Mathura; Holi is enormous

Things to do in Agra with kids

Agra Fort · Free under 15, and it is a real fort with gates, ramps and towers
Taj Nature Walk · Almost free, shaded, and the Taj is visible from the mounds
Keoladeo National Park · You go round by cycle rickshaw; the drivers know the birds
Ram Bagh · Cheap, open, almost empty, and room to run
Paliwal Park · Free, shaded, a lake, and the only park in the city
Hiran Minar · A tower covered in stone elephant tusks, built for an elephant
Petha shops · They let you taste; there are dozens of versions
TDI Mall · Air conditioning and a cinema — necessary in May, not optional

Nightlife in Agra

Agra has no nightlife in the usual sense and it is better to say so: the monuments close at sunset, alcohol is served mainly in hotels, and the city is largely asleep by eleven. What the evening actually is here is the sunset from across the river, the bazaar at its busiest hour, a dance show built for tour groups, and the February festival that is the one time the city genuinely fills.

Sunset at Mehtab Bagh · The Taj is never floodlit; closes at sunset
Full-moon viewing · Five nights a month; tickets in advance only
Kalakriti dance show · 90 minutes; the only scheduled evening show
Sadar Bazaar at night · Prices are marked here; pedestrianised evenings
Taj Mahotsav · Ten days every February; a few rupees
Hotel bars · Hotel bars, and very few standalone ones

sleepntripFree cancellationEvery room we sell cancels for free

Plans change? Until the date on the card it costs nothing.

Find a room

Frequently asked questions about Agra

What is there to see in Agra?

The top sights in Agra are Taj Mahal, Taj east gate and Taj west gate. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Agra?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Agra without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Agra?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Agra, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Taj, and the things nobody tells you.

How do you get to Agra and get around?

The main ways are Agra Cantt station, Agra Fort station and Idgah bus stand. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Agra, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Agra that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

Looking for a hotel in Agra for your dates?

Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.

All hotels in Agra

Plan a trip across IndiaA journey of colors and flavors→