Landmark · Delhi

Qutb Minar

In 60 seconds

The Qutb Minar — commonly spelled Qutub Minar — is a 72.5-metre victory tower of red sandstone and marble in Mehrauli, south Delhi, India, and the tallest brick minaret in the world. ASI records that Qutbu'd-Din Aibak laid its foundation in 1199 and built the first storey; Iltutmish added three more; Firuz Shah Tughlaq and Sikandar Lodi repaired it after lightning. It stands in a complex that includes the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque of 1198 — built, by the inscription over its own eastern entrance, from the material of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples — and a fourth-century iron pillar that has not rusted through. UNESCO-listed in 1993. Entry is ₹50 for Indian, SAARC and BIMSTEC visitors (₹35 online) and ₹600 for other foreign visitors (₹550 online), under-15s free; ASI gives the hours as sunrise to 8 p.m. You cannot climb it: the interior has been closed since a stampede killed forty-five people in 1981.

Fees & timings

CHECKED AGAINST OFFICIAL SOURCES · AUGUST 2026

Entry — foreign visitors	₹600 at the counter · ₹550 online
Entry — Indian, SAARC & BIMSTEC	₹50 at the counter · ₹35 online
Children under 15	Free
Hours	Sunrise to 20:00, daily
Climbing the tower	Not possible — the interior has been shut since 1981
Height	72.5 m, five storeys, tapering from 14.3 m to 2.7 m across
Allow	1.5 – 2 hours for the whole complex

Spot a change on the ground? Tell us — we fix it in days.

The pillar that will not rust

In the mosque courtyard stands an iron pillar about seven and a quarter metres tall and six tonnes in weight, carrying a Sanskrit inscription in Brahmi of the fourth century: a Vishnudhvaja raised for a king called Chandra, generally identified as Chandragupta II. It is 99.72 per cent iron and it has stood in the open air for some sixteen hundred years without rusting through. The reason is phosphorus — the forging left a phosphorus-rich surface which reacts with air and moisture to form a thin protective layer of iron hydrogen phosphate, and then stops. The railing around it stops something else: the old custom of standing with your back to the pillar and joining your hands behind it, which was polishing the metal away.

The India Unfolded edit

Five things to look at, that nobody points out

Smith's Folly, on the lawn

South-east of the minar, sitting on the grass, is a Bengal-style cupola. Major Robert Smith put it on top of the tower in 1828 after earthquake damage; it was taken down again in 1848 as an insult to the building, and left where it stood. It is the only piece of the Qutb Minar you can walk up to and touch.

The stump that was meant to be twice as tall

North of the minar is the Alai Minar, a rubble core about 24.5 metres high. Alauddin Khalji intended it to be double the Qutb's height. He died, nobody continued it, and it has stood as a first storey ever since. It is the most honest object in the complex.

Where the arch arrives

The Alai Darwaza, dated AH 710 — AD 1311 — is the gateway ASI calls the first building in India constructed on Islamic structural principles: a true arch and a true dome. A short walk away, Iltutmish's tomb of 1235 has corbelled squinches, stone stepped out course by course to fake a curve. Two buildings, seventy-six years apart, and the technique arriving in between.

Sanderson's sundial

A small white marble sundial of 1919 commemorates Gordon Sanderson, an ASI superintendent who died in 1915 — a memorial to an archaeologist, inside the monument he looked after. Nothing on site explains it.

Read the temple stones

The columns of the Quwwat-ul-Islam cloisters carry bells, chains and tasselled garlands, and figures with their faces chiselled off. They were carved for the temples the mosque's own inscription says were dismantled to build it. Almost everything else was reused exactly as it was.

What isn’t true

“You can climb the Qutub Minar”

Closed since 1981

The staircase has been shut for more than forty years. On 4 December 1981 a power failure inside the tower caused a stampede on the stairs; forty-five people died, most of them schoolchildren on a trip. The interior has not been open to the public since, and no amount of asking at the gate changes it.

More in Delhi

The full Delhi city guide →What to eat in Delhi — the free Food Guide →