About Humayun's Tomb
Before the Taj Mahal, there was this dress rehearsal. Commissioned by Empress Bega Begum, Humayun's first wife, and designed by the Persian architect Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, who died before it was finished and left the work to his son, it was the first garden tomb on the subcontinent and the first building to use red sandstone on this scale. The charbagh garden covers about 12 hectares (30 acres).
So many members of the imperial family were buried here that the place earned the nickname "dormitory of the Mughals." A major restoration by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture with the Archaeological Survey of India, finished in 2003, gave the complex its shine back; it has been a World Heritage Site since 1993.
