Uttar Pradesh

Agra

Agra's name is thought to derive from "Agrevana," a forest mentioned in the Mahabharata, though the city only became famous under the Mughals. Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan ruled the empire from here through its golden age, and it was Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, legend holds he intended a mirror-image black marble tomb for himself across the river, never completed. That single act of grief produced the most photographed building on Earth, alongside Agra Fort and the abandoned Mughal capital of Fatehpur Sikri nearby.