"If there be a paradise on earth, this is it, this is it, this is it."

These words are engraved on the walls of the Red Fort or the Lal Qila. Located in Delhi, the construction of the Red fort began at the behest of Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan in 1638 AD. The entire building took 10 years to complete. Red Fort at Delhi represents the culmination of centuries of experience in the construction of Muslim palace-forts. It contains a range of marble buildings and formal ornamental gardens. A sumptuous array of palaces, pavilions and balconies was erected along the eastern wall, capped by turrets and kiosks which imparted a romantic silhouette to the entire edifice.

Red Fort was the palace for Shah Jahan`s new capital, Shahjahanabad, the seventh Muslim city in the Delhi site. The Red Fort stands at the eastern edge of Shahjahanabad, and gets its name from the massive wall of red sandstone that defines its eight sides. The wall is 1.5miles long, and varies in height from 60 feet on the riverside to 110 feet towards the city. Measurements have shown that the plan was generated using a square grid of 82m. The fort lies along what was once the course of the Yamuna River that supplies the moats that surround most of the wall. The wall at its north-eastern corner is adjoining to an older fort, the Salimgarh, a defense built by Islam Shah Sur in 1546.

At one point of time, more than 3000 people lived within the premises of the Delhi Fort complex. But after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the fort was captured by Britain and was made the headquarters of the British Indian Army. After India achieved independence in 1947, the Indian Army took control over the fort. In December 2003 the Indian Army handed the fort over to the Indian tourist authorities.

Almost all the structures in Red Fort took the form of one-storey open pavilions with facades of engrailed arches shaded by chajjas and punctuated by corner domed kiosks - the fabled marble tents of Shahjahanabad. Today they resemble deserted husks. The resplendent life of the court can only be gleaned from the countless contemporary miniature paintings, which depict it in its heyday, with palaces hung with carpets, brocades, canopies and cushions, and gardens planted with exotic shrubs, interspersed with cool fountains and sparkling cascades.

The Rang Mahal and Diwan-i-Khas, with its elegant perforated tracery, mirror the sheer splendour of Indo-Islamic architecture. The common use of polished marble, the lavish but ordered use of inlaid ornament and the pulsating rhythm of internal perspectives of engrailed arches with flowing sensuous curves combined to create a complex of buildings of exuberance and grace. The Diwan-i-Am was not as lavishly treated; its use for public audience as opposed to private pleasure dictated a more restrained, dignified treatment. Within this structure is the alcove where the emperor sat on the famous Peacock Throne, a scene illustrated in some Mughal miniatures of the period.

Outside the fort Shah Jahan built the famous Jama Masjid, one of the largest mosques in the country. It is an impressive building situated on a raised plinth and executed in a lucid and coherent manner for maximum visual impact. It was the last of the great mosques of Islamic India, the culmination of a heritage which began almost 500 years earlier with the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque and which developed in fine examples at Ahmedabad, Bijapur, Jaunpur, Mandu, and elsewhere.

Besides these, the Red Fort also houses the Moti Masjid, Hammam, Tasbih Khana and Mumtaz Mahal among others. The architecture of Red Fort is also worth noticing.