Fort

Fort Review

What's extraordinary about this fort is that 5,000 people still live here, just as they did centuries ago. Some 250 feet above the town, the fort is protected by a 30-foot-high wall and contains 99 bastions. Several great pols (gateways) approach and jut outward from the battlements of this 12th-century citadel. Built of sandstone and extremely brittle, the fort is rumored to be an architectural time bomb, destined to collapse in the face of a particularly aggressive sandstorm. So lovely is this structure that the poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) composed Sonar Kila (The Golden Fort) after seeing it, and inspired another creative Bengali in turn—Satyajit Ray made his famous film by the same name after reading Tagore's work.

Inside the web of tiny lanes are Jain and Hindu temples, palaces, and charming havelis. The seven-story Juna Mahal (Old Palace), built around 1500, towers over the other buildings. The Satiyon ka Pagthiya (Steps of the Satis), just before the palace entrance, is where the royal ladies committed sati, self-immolation, when their husbands were slain.

Within the fort are eight Jain temples (Free. Daily 7am-noon), built from the 12th to 16th centuries, which house thousands of carved deities and dancing figures in mythological settings. No photography is allowed here, and you'll have to leave your leather items at the gate (Jains worship life in all forms, so leather is sacrilegious). The Gyan Bhandar (Free. Daily 10am-11am), inside the Jain temple complex contains more than 1,000 old manuscripts—some from the 12th century, written on palm leaf, with painted wooden covers—and a collection of Jain, pre-Moghul, and Rajput paintings. The historic Tazia Tower is a delicate pagoda rising five tiers from the Badal Mahal (Cloud Palace), each tier designed to include an intricately carved balcony. Muslim craftsmen built the tower in the shape of a tazia—a replica of a bier carried in procession during Mohurram, a Muslim period of mourning.