Our first stop In Agra was the tomb of Itmad-ud-daulah. Our guide referred to this tomb as the Baby Taj Mahal. It was sort of a draft of the Taj Mahal. It was also a Mughal tomb and was built 32 years before the Taj Mahal. Our guide said that they tried out some building techniques in constructing this tomb and that they used some on the Taj Mahal and discarded others. This was the first white marble tomb built in India. Before this tomb, they were all red sandstone tombs. It was also built symmetrically, like the Taj Mahal, and was also very beautiful. One amazing thing was that we had this whole place practically to ourselves. I would guess that there were less than 20 other people here when we were and this place was very large, especially with all the grounds. It is also located on the Yamuna River, just a meter and a half upstream from the Taj Mahal. It includes extensive outbuildings, gardens, walkways, and water courses.

You can see the tomb in the first photo. It’s primarily white marble with inlaid work. As nice as it looked from here, I thought it looked better and better as we got closer.

You can see one of the ‘other’ buildings in the second photo. The tomb was white marble with inlaid sandstone while the surrounding buildings were red sandstone with inlaid marble. The third photo shows the main tomb with one of the surrounding buildings to see the contrast in building materials.

Since I said that the closer I got, the better it looked, I will try and explain why. These photos are simply closer photos of the tomb. The first one is one of the entrance arches. You can see that the entire building is decorated, mostly with inlaid work. In the top center, you can see that some of the decorative work is chiseled carving of the marble. The decorative work was on the floors, walls, arches, ceilings, roof eves, and everything.

The next photo is just a close-up photo of a section of the wall. It is white marble with inlaid stone and minerals. They used dozens of different stones and petrified wood for the inlaid pieces. All the inlaid work was done by hand with chisel and mallet. I think this next photo gives a good indication of the quality of the workmanship. The inlaid work was semiprecious stones including cornelian, jasper, lapis, lazuli, onyx, and topaz.

We got to go inside this tomb and it was decorated beautifully. Also, we could stay as long as we wanted and we could take pictures. This tomb had carved marble lattice windows which allowed good light inside. The last photo is a close-up photo of the ceiling inside the tomb. It was beautiful mosaics with semiprecious stones and painting including gold leaf.