Fatehpur Sikri

Akbar came to the village of Sikri to seek the blessing of the Sufi Sheikh Salim Chishti for an heir, and when his son Jahangir was born in 1569 he built a city here in gratitude. For fourteen years it was the centre of the Mughal world; then the court left, probably for lack of water and a campaign in the Punjab, and Sikri has stood mostly empty ever since. That emptiness is its gift.

The palace quarter is a sequence of red sandstone courtyards where you can read Akbar's experiments in the stone: the Diwan-i-Khas with its single carved pillar and radiating bridges, the five-storey Panch Mahal that shrinks as it rises like a Buddhist vihara, the Anup Talao pool where Tansen is said to have sung, and the palace of Mariam-uz-Zamani with Hindu brackets and Persian tilework side by side. Through a gateway is the Jama Masjid, one of the largest mosques in India, and in its courtyard the white marble tomb of Salim Chishti, its jali screens so fine that the light comes through them like lace. Women tie threads to the screens asking for children, as they have for four centuries.

Buland Darwaza, the victory gate added after Akbar's Gujarat conquest, stands 54 metres tall above a flight of 42 steps. Go early or in the last two hours of daylight, when the stone glows and the tour buses have gone, and walk out to the Hiran Minar with its stone elephant tusks.