The Red Fort was built by Akbar the Great as a military compound. It eventually became partially a palace (and sometimes a prison) for members of the royal family. I believe it housed some sort of military component into the 20th Century.

I don't take particularly good photos when it's cloudy.

It's not that there aren't many things to say about Agra's Red Fort, but that I have not much to say about the place. The pictures I have are not very good, but they do spark some memories. Allow me to enumerate:

No grapes in winter.

ONE The Mughals were Muslim and Islam just says no to wine. It ruffled more than a few feathers, then, when Akbar decided to flaunt his secularism and install a vineyard in the middle of the Red Fort. If I remember correctly, he was powerful enough that such transgressions could not be used against him. What's more, whenever the pious broached the subject, Akbar pretended to be drunk and flipped them the bird. Due to disparity of status, they could not respond in kind.

TWO Re: the views of the Taj Mahal from the Red Fort. The two are less than a mile apart, so the view from the Fort should be crystal clear. And it was until the Industrial Revolultion hit Agra. It's difficult now to imagine how mesmerizing the Taj Mahal must have been, sparkling in the moonlight, from the Fort's balconies. More difficult to imagine is that the current views may be an improvement - due to shifts in environmental policy the air in many of India's cities has been getting less dirty.

Who says there were no good old days?

A shake of this. A dash of that. Presto. The Divine Faith.

THREE Akbar famously tried to instill the ideas of the Divine Faith, a religion of his own design combining elements from all the faiths found in his farflung empire, through his architecture. The gateway in the picture to the left is a good example of this. Note the pointed arches and windows, an Islamic motif; the wheels at both top corners of the entry, Buddhist representations of samsara, the karmic cycle of birth, suffering, and rebirth; and the six-pointed stars, attributable in ways I don't recall to Hinduism (our guide suggested they were Stars of David, symbols of Judaism, but this makes little sense as Judaism had at most a tiny presence in the subcontinent and our guide, as shall be noted in another entry, was not reliable and quite possibly a highway bandit).

You're a barrell full of monkeys.

FOUR   One is not to feed the monkeys.

No, you're a barrell full of monkeys!