Built by Emperor Shah Jahan in 1648, the beautiful Red Fort served as the throne of the Mughal for more than 200 years. With its tall, red sandstone walls, this brilliant fortress stands proudly at one end of Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi) and is Delhi’s most iconic attraction. This crescent shaped fort with 18m-high walls took 10 years to build. In few of the legendary tales it’s been told that the foundations of the fortress were built over the beheaded bodies of prisoners for luck. Shah Jahan never entirely resided here, for he had been imprisoned at Agra Fort by his disloyal son, Aurangzeb. The British had demolished the buildings and gardens within the fortress walls after the last Mughal emperor of Delhi, and replaced them with barracks for the colonial army.