Landmark · Agra

I'timad-ud-Daulah's Tomb — the Baby Taj

In 60 seconds

The tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah is a small marble mausoleum on the east bank of the Yamuna in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, built between 1622 and 1628 by the empress Nur Jahan for her father, Mirza Ghiyas Beg. It is the first Mughal building faced entirely in white marble and the first to use pietra dura — the inlaid-stone technique the Taj Mahal would be covered in a decade later, which is why it is nicknamed the Baby Taj. The counter price is commonly listed at about ₹30 for Indian visitors and ₹310 for foreign visitors, sunrise to sunset daily; ASI publishes no fee page for it, so treat those as approximate and check at the gate. Allow forty-five minutes, go around midday when the sun drives the lattice patterns onto the floor, and go before the Taj rather than after. In that order it reads as what it is: the rehearsal.

Fees & timings

CHECKED AGAINST OFFICIAL SOURCES · AUGUST 2026

Entry — foreign visitors	≈ ₹310 · not published by ASI; verify at the gate
Entry — Indian visitors	≈ ₹30 · not published by ASI; verify at the gate
If you did the Taj first	ASI's note says the ₹500 Taj Pathkar covers the toll here too
Hours	Sunrise to sunset, daily
Where	East bank of the Yamuna, about 4 km from the Taj by road
Built	1622 – 1628, by Nur Jahan for her father
Allow	45 minutes — an hour if the light is good

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The figures above are not from an official source. ASI's published Category B rate is ₹25 for Indian and ₹300 for foreign visitors, with an Agra Development Authority toll on top; the ₹30 and ₹310 quoted here are the counter prices listed by Agra tourism sites, and they are what visitors report paying. Confirm at the gate — and if you have already bought the Taj's ₹500 Pathkar that day, ASI's own note lists this monument among those it covers.

The daughter who built for her father

Mirza Ghiyas Beg arrived in India from Persia with nothing, rose to be Jahangir's treasurer and was given the title I'timad-ud-Daulah — Pillar of the State. His daughter married the emperor, became Nur Jahan and struck coins in her own name. When he died in 1622 she built him this: twenty-three metres square, four squat minarets, no dome but a marble canopy where one would go, and every surface inlaid with topaz, onyx, jasper, lapis and cornelian in cypresses, wine flasks and vases. Ten years later her stepson began the Taj Mahal in the same materials at nine times the scale, and this building's name was reduced to a diminutive of his.

The India Unfolded edit

Four things to look at, that nobody points out

The first pietra dura in India

Look closely at the flowers on the south face. They are not carved and not painted: shapes were cut out of the marble and filled with stone cut to match, flush to the surface. This building is where the technique arrives in India. The Taj's craftsmen learned it here.

No dome

The Taj's silhouette is a dome. This one has none — a square canopy sits where a dome would be, with four octagonal minarets at the corners. It is the older Persian type, and standing in front of it makes the Taj's shape look like a decision rather than an inevitability.

Wine flasks on a tomb

Among the inlaid motifs are flasks, cups and dishes of fruit — a Persian courtly vocabulary rather than a funerary one. On a Mughal tomb this is unusually worldly, and it is the strongest visual argument that the building was designed by someone Persian, for a Persian family, in a Persian idiom.

The lattice at noon

The jalis are cut so fine that from a few paces the walls read as fabric. Around midday they throw the pattern onto the floor of the central chamber in hard geometry — which is the reason to come at the hour everyone else spends avoiding the sun.

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