Red Fort

The Red Fort stands on the western bank of the Yamuna in Old Delhi, at the eastern end of Chandni Chowk. The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan ordered it built when he moved his capital from Agra to his new city of Shahjahanabad, and work ran from 1638 to 1648. The architect was Ustad Ahmad Lahori, who is also linked with the Taj Mahal.

Its name comes from the red sandstone of its walls, which run for about 2.4 kilometres and enclose roughly 103 hectares. The fort was the main residence of the Mughal emperors for about two centuries, until the British took control after the uprising of 1857 and removed many of its buildings for barracks.

Visitors enter through the Lahori Gate, which faces Lahore, and walk along the Chhatta Chowk, a covered arcade of shops. Inside, the Diwan-i-Aam was the hall of public audience, and the Diwan-i-Khas, built of white marble, was the hall of private audience where the Peacock Throne once stood. The Rang Mahal, the royal baths and the small white marble Moti Masjid, added by Aurangzeb, lie near the river side, linked by a water channel called the Nahr-i-Bihisht.

The fort has a central place in modern India. On 15 August 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru raised the national flag above the Lahori Gate, and every Prime Minister has since given the Independence Day speech from its ramparts. UNESCO listed the Red Fort Complex as a World Heritage Site in 2007. Several museums inside the fort cover Indian independence and Mughal history.

The fort is run by the Archaeological Survey of India. Since an ASI order of 13 February 2026 it opens every day of the week, Mondays included, from sunrise to 9 pm. Foreign visitors pay ₹550 online or ₹600 at the counter, visitors from SAARC and BIMSTEC countries pay ₹35 online or ₹50 in cash, and children under 15 enter free. Chandni Chowk and Lal Quila metro stations are within walking distance. Allow two to three hours, and expect bag checks at the entrance.

What else is inside the Red Fort walls?

The walls stand 18 metres high on the river side and 33 metres on the city side. Beyond the Lahori Gate, the Delhi Gate on the south side is flanked by two life-size stone elephants facing each other. The Naubat Khana, or drum house, at the east end of Chhatta Chowk was where musicians played at set hours and where all but royalty had to dismount. Its upper floor now holds the Indian War Memorial Museum.

Four museums opened in 2019 in the old British barracks, covering the 1857 uprising, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army, and Indian art in the Drishyakala gallery. In the north-east corner, the Hayat Bakhsh Bagh garden keeps its white marble Sawan and Bhadon pavilions and the red sandstone Zafar Mahal, added around 1842 in the middle of its tank.

The fort's history after Shah Jahan was violent. The Persian ruler Nadir Shah looted it in 1739 and carried off the Peacock Throne. After the 1857 uprising the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was tried inside the fort in 1858 and exiled to Rangoon. To the north, an arched bridge links the Red Fort to Salimgarh Fort, built in 1546 by Salim Shah Suri, which the Mughal walls were shaped around.