What can I say? It’s an amazing building. The second you lay eyes on it, you’re mesmerized. It just commands your attention. You have to hand it to the Muslims: they certainly seem to have a keen sense for design. The Taj Mahal was designed by an Iranian architect, based on Islamic themes you find in many mosques throughout the Muslim world. Everything about the Taj is purely symmetrical.
The Taj Mahal is also full of optical illusions that give it a real presence on the landscape. Things like vertical lines that diverge as they run up the building were made to look parallel while you view them from the ground. When you enter the courtyard (the place where you see the most famous view of the Taj Mahal with the fountains in front), you can start stepping backwards and it will actually appear to get bigger the further back you walk. The surrounding towers lean slightly outward to protect the main building from earthquakes. Some circular columns that run up the building appear to be angular columns when viewed from more than 10 feet away. It’s an amazing place.
The building itself is pure white marble with designs raised or cut out and filled in with black marble and semi-precious stones. You can shine flashlights through the marble and illuminate different colors behind the stones. It’s supposed to be amazing to see late in the day when it illuminates in a range of colors as the sun sets, but it was a bit too hazy and the sunlight too defused for me to see the effect when I was there.
