Fatehpur Sikri: Planning Lessons From a Mughal City

Fatehpur Sikri is one of the strangest and most instructive places in Indian architecture. In the early 1570s the Mughal emperor Akbar began building a new capital on a rocky ridge near the village of Sikri, about 40 kilometres west of Agra. Within roughly fifteen years it held palaces, a great mosque, courts, offices, workshops, baths, gardens and markets — and then the court moved on. Because it was occupied for such a short time and never rebuilt by later rulers, the royal complex survives with a clarity that few other Mughal sites have. It reads like an architect's model of a city, cut in red sandstone and left out in the sun.

Most visitors see Fatehpur Sikri as a sequence of beautiful buildings: the towering Buland Darwaza, the white marble tomb of Salim Chishti, the five-storeyed Panch Mahal, the single carved pillar of the Diwan-i-Khas. Designers can see more. The site is a lesson in how to arrange spaces from public to private, how to build on a slope, how to make courtyards behave like rooms, how to keep cool without machines, and how a strict material palette can unify dozens of buildings. It is also a warning. A city laid out with great care for ceremony and comfort could not hold its people for long, and the reasons — commonly said to include water, and certainly including politics — are as useful to planners as its beauty.

This article tells the story briefly, walks through the plan and its key buildings, and then turns each idea into a practical lesson for Indian homes, bungalows, hotels and campuses today — with dimensions, tables and drawings. Dates follow UNESCO, the Archaeological Survey of India and standard histories; where historians are uncertain, the text says so.

A capital built in a hurry: the story in brief

The story usually begins with a saint. Sheikh Salim Chishti, a Sufi of the Chishti order, lived at Sikri, and Akbar — who had no surviving son — visited him to seek his blessing. A son was born in 1569 and named Salim after the saint; he would later reign as the emperor Jahangir. Akbar decided to build a new capital beside the saint's home. Work on the great mosque and the palaces began around 1571, and after the emperor's successful campaign in Gujarat in 1572–73 the city became known as Fatehpur — the City of Victory. The Buland Darwaza, the monumental southern gateway to the mosque, is traditionally associated with that victory and is generally dated to around 1575.

For the next decade Fatehpur Sikri was the centre of the empire. Akbar held court here, built his Ibadat Khana — the hall in which he hosted debates between scholars of different faiths from the mid-1570s, though its exact location in the complex is still debated — and drew craftsmen from across his territories, including Gujarat and Rajasthan. Around 1585 the court moved north-west to Lahore, as Akbar's attention turned to the frontier. The departure is often attributed to a shortage of water, and the city's dependence on an artificial lake and lifted water certainly made it vulnerable; many historians also emphasise the political and military reasons. The court never returned to Fatehpur Sikri as its permanent seat, and the city declined. In 1986, UNESCO inscribed Fatehpur Sikri as a World Heritage Site.

Reading the site: a city laid on a ridge

Fatehpur Sikri stands on a long sandstone ridge. The ridge gave the builders three gifts: height for defence and views, good drainage, and stone that could be quarried almost on the spot. The royal city was walled on three sides; on the fourth, towards the north-west, lay a large artificial lake formed by damming the low ground. Visitors arriving from Agra entered through the Agra Gate and climbed towards the palace complex along the ridge. The great mosque, the Jama Masjid, with the tomb of Salim Chishti in its courtyard, occupies the high ground at the south-western end of the royal enclosure.

The palace buildings are not arranged along one grand axis, as at the Taj Mahal. Instead they form a cluster of courtyards at slightly different levels, each enclosed by buildings and colonnades, linked at their corners and edges. Most of the royal buildings are laid out square to the cardinal directions rather than following the line of the ridge, and the courts step up and down with the ground. The result is less like a single monument and more like a small town of rooms open to the sky — which is exactly why it is so useful for designers of houses, resorts and campuses.

The key buildings and what each one teaches

Lesson 1 — Sequence spaces from public to private

The clearest planning idea at Fatehpur Sikri is the gradient from public to private. Visitors came first to the Diwan-i-Aam, a large open court where the emperor appeared to the public. Beyond it lay the Diwan-i-Khas and the courts used for smaller, more select gatherings; further still, the emperor's own quarters, and behind those the private residential courts of the royal household. Each step was a threshold — a gate, a change of level, a turn — and each court was smaller and more enclosed than the one before.

Indian homes still need this gradient, and it is often missing in modern flats, where the main door opens straight into the living room and a guest can see into a bedroom from the sofa. The Fatehpur principle is simple: arrange spaces so that a visitor passes through them in order of decreasing publicness, and never has to cross a private zone to reach a public one. In a bungalow that means a forecourt, a foyer, a formal living room, a family living room, and then the bedrooms; in a flat it means at least a foyer buffer and a bedroom passage that turns away from the living room. In a hotel or a resort it means a drop-off, a lobby, public restaurants and lounges, and then guest wings reached through a clear transition.

Lesson 2 — Treat courtyards as rooms

At Fatehpur Sikri the courtyards are not leftover space between buildings. They are the main rooms of the city, sized, paved and edged as carefully as any hall. Colonnades and verandahs wrap their edges and provide shaded routes; the open centre is used for gatherings, games and ceremonies. The court traditionally identified as the Pachisi court even has its paving laid out as a board for the game. This is the courtyard as an outdoor room — the same idea found in Gujarat's pol houses and in Rajasthani havelis, at palace scale.

In a modern Indian house, a courtyard works when its proportions suit the climate. A narrow, tall court — where the width is roughly equal to or less than the height of the surrounding walls — stays shaded for most of the day and holds cooler air, which suits hot-dry climates. A wider court, with width well beyond the wall height, admits more sun and breeze, which suits warm-humid climates where air movement matters more than shade. The surrounding verandah, about 1800–2400 mm deep, is what makes the court usable in summer heat and monsoon rain.

Lesson 3 — Build open structures for a hot climate

Many of the buildings at Fatehpur Sikri are not enclosed halls but pavilions: roofs carried on columns and brackets, open on several sides, wrapped with deep eaves called chhajjas, and screened, where privacy was needed, with jaalis. The Panch Mahal is the purest example — a five-storeyed tower of columns, each floor smaller than the one below, open to the wind. Its upper floors catch breezes that never reach the ground, and its stepped form shades each level with the one above. Historic accounts and surviving fittings suggest the openings were once screened, which would have given privacy while still letting air through.

This trabeated, post-and-beam construction — columns, brackets, beams and flat slabs of stone — owes much to the building traditions of Gujarat and Rajasthan, and it is one reason the city looks so different from the arched and domed Mughal buildings of Delhi and Agra. For modern designers, the lesson is that in hot climates the most comfortable rooms are often semi-open: verandahs, pavilions, covered terraces and pergolas that provide shade without trapping heat. Deep chhajjas, a feature of almost every building at Fatehpur Sikri, are the cheapest climate device in Indian architecture and should be drawn on every facade that receives sun.

Lesson 4 — One material, many buildings

Almost everything at Fatehpur Sikri is built of the same red sandstone, quarried from the ridge on which it stands. Columns, beams, brackets, roofs, screens, floors and even the brackets that look like timber carving are all stone. White marble appears sparingly, most memorably in the tomb of Salim Chishti, where its brightness against the red surroundings makes the small building the visual heart of the mosque courtyard. That restraint is why dozens of buildings of different dates and purposes read as one city.

The modern lesson applies at every scale. A house, hotel or campus looks coherent when it commits to one primary material and one secondary accent, and repeats them with discipline. Local stone, exposed brick, fair-faced concrete or lime plaster can all play the role of the sandstone; a single precious material — marble, brass, carved timber — can play the role of the tomb, concentrated in one place. Using local material also shortens transport, suits the climate and usually ages better than imported cladding.

Lesson 5 — Build with the ground, not against it

The royal complex steps with the ridge. Courts sit at different levels, joined by steps, ramps and changes of plinth; the Buland Darwaza is approached by a high flight of steps that turns the climb itself into part of the ceremony. Rather than flattening the hill into one platform, the builders used the slope to separate zones and create views. On sloping sites in hill stations, in the Western Ghats or on undulating plots in Saurashtra and Kutch, the same approach saves excavation and retaining walls, and gives each level its own character.

Even on flat urban plots, a few hundred millimetres of level change does useful work. A plinth of 450–600 mm above road level keeps water out in the monsoon; a step of 150 mm between a foyer and a sunken living room marks a threshold; a raised platform in a courtyard becomes a seat or a stage. Fatehpur Sikri shows how deliberate level changes, rather than accidental ones, organise a plan.

Lesson 6 — Water first: why a perfect plan still failed

Fatehpur Sikri's builders went to great lengths for water. The artificial lake to the north-west, water-lifting arrangements that raised water in stages towards the ridge, step-wells, tanks such as the Anup Talao, baths and drains all served the city. Yet a capital on a dry ridge depended on these systems working continuously, and on enough monsoon rain to fill the lake each year. Whatever the precise mix of reasons for the court's departure around 1585, the vulnerability of the water supply is one that every planner understands.

For modern projects the message is blunt: infrastructure is design. Before a resort, a farmhouse, a campus or a township is drawn in detail, the water source, storage, treatment, rainwater harvesting and drainage need to be secured and sized. For a house, that means a sump and overhead tank sized for at least a day or two of use, rainwater harvesting to recharge the ground, and drainage that will cope with the heaviest monsoon storms. Beautiful courtyards are no use if the borewell runs dry.

Lesson 7 — Make the arrival an experience

The approach to the Jama Masjid through the Buland Darwaza is one of the great arrival sequences in Indian architecture. A visitor climbs a broad flight of steps towards a gate so tall it fills the sky, passes through a deep, shaded arch, and emerges into a vast, bright courtyard with the white tomb of Salim Chishti floating in the far distance. The effect depends on contrast: compression and shade in the gateway, release and light in the court. Designers use the same contrast, at domestic scale, when a low, dim foyer opens into a tall, bright living room, or when a resort's covered drop-off gives onto a sudden view of a lawn or a lake.

In Aaditya Interior's hospitality and residential work, the arrival sequence is often the first thing discussed with clients, because it sets the character of everything that follows. A house that opens directly into its biggest room has nothing left to reveal. A house that holds back — a foyer with a screen, a turn, a change of ceiling height — gives every arrival a small moment of discovery.

Fatehpur Sikri today and tomorrow

Today the royal complex and the mosque are protected and maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India and remain among the most visited monuments in the Agra region. The mosque is still in use, and the tomb of Salim Chishti draws pilgrims of many faiths. Conservation work continues on the sandstone, which weathers and erodes, and on the drainage of the courts. For students of architecture, measured drawings, photographs and site visits remain the best way to understand how the courts, levels and pavilions work in three dimensions.

Its relevance for the future is growing rather than shrinking. As Indian cities heat up and energy for cooling becomes expensive, the ideas built into Fatehpur Sikri — shade, courtyards, open pavilions, thermal mass, water and breeze — are returning in climate-responsive houses, resorts and campuses. The difference is that modern designers can test them with daylight and airflow simulation before building, and combine them with insulation, efficient services and solar power. The city also stands as a reminder that a plan must serve the long life of a place, not only the vision of its founder.

Rules to take from Fatehpur Sikri

• Order every plan from public to private, with a real threshold between each zone.
• Design courtyards as rooms: size them for their use and climate, and wrap them with 1800–2400 mm verandahs.
• Use semi-open pavilions, verandahs and terraces as the most comfortable rooms in hot weather.
• Draw a chhajja of 600–1200 mm over every opening that receives sun or rain.
• Commit to one primary material and one precious accent, and repeat them with discipline.
• Use level changes deliberately — plinths, steps and terraces — instead of flattening the site.
• Secure water supply, storage, harvesting and drainage before detailed design begins.
• Plan the arrival as a sequence of compression and release.

Frequently asked questions

Who built Fatehpur Sikri and when?

The Mughal emperor Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri. Work began around 1571 beside the home of the Sufi saint Sheikh Salim Chishti, and the city served as Akbar's capital until about 1585, when the court moved to Lahore.

Why was Fatehpur Sikri abandoned?

The departure of the court around 1585 is often attributed to a shortage of water, and the city did depend on an artificial lake and lifted water. Historians also stress political and military reasons, as Akbar moved north-west to deal with the frontier. The court never returned to make it the permanent capital again.

What is special about the Diwan-i-Khas?

The Diwan-i-Khas contains a single, richly carved central pillar whose wide bracketed capital supports a circular platform. Narrow bridges link this platform to the corners of an upper gallery. It is a striking example of one structural element organising an entire room.

What was the Panch Mahal used for?

The Panch Mahal is an open, five-storeyed pavilion, each floor smaller than the one below. It is generally understood as a pleasure pavilion for catching breezes and enjoying the views; its open, columned structure makes it one of the clearest climate-responsive buildings in the complex.

How can Fatehpur Sikri's ideas be used in a modern house?

Arrange rooms from public to private, place a courtyard or light well at the centre with a shaded verandah around it, add deep chhajjas over openings, include a semi-open terrace or pavilion, use one main material consistently, and plan water storage and rainwater harvesting at the start. Fig. 3 shows one way of combining these on a 15 × 15 m footprint.