The Most Beautiful Places in Uttar Pradesh
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Uttar Pradesh are Agra Fort, Taj Mahal and Akbar's Tomb. The list covers 6 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Uttar Pradesh lies on the broad plain of the Ganges and the Yamuna, the most populous state of India and for centuries the centre of its empires. The Mughals made Agra and Fatehpur Sikri their capitals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and their builders combined Persian gardens, Indian craftsmanship, red sandstone and white marble into a style that reached its peak here. Later, the Nawabs of Awadh gave Lucknow its own flamboyant architecture.
The Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, rises in white marble above the Yamuna. Upstream, Agra Fort is a walled city of red sandstone with marble palaces inside. Across the river, the Tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah, often called the Baby Taj, was among the first Mughal buildings faced with marble inlaid in coloured stone.
At Sikandra, Akbar's Tomb sits in a vast walled garden behind a gateway with four white minarets. Fatehpur Sikri, the red city Akbar built and then left within a few decades, keeps its palaces, courtyards and the towering Buland Darwaza almost as they stood. In Lucknow, the Rumi Darwaza is an ornate eighteenth-century gateway built under Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Agra Fort | Fort | ✓ |
| 2 | Taj Mahal | Mausoleum | ✓ |
| 3 | Akbar's Tomb | Mausoleum | |
| 4 | Tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah | Mausoleum | |
| 5 | Fatehpur Sikri | Fort | ✓ |
| 6 | Rumi Darwaza | City gate |
01 Agra Fort
India · 1.1 km from Agra27.180° N 78.021° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by sarangib from Pixabay Agra Fort is the walled citadel from which the Mughal emperors ruled northern India for most of a century, and it is the key to understanding everything else in Agra, the Taj Mahal included.
Did you know? Akbar's rebuilding employed around 4,000 workers every day for eight years, from 1565 to 1573.
02 Taj Mahal
India · 2.9 km from Agra27.175° N 78.042° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Taj_Mahal,_Agra,_India_edit2.jpg : Yann ; edited by King of Hearts derivative work: Jbarta ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 Shah Jahan began building this in 1631 as a tomb for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who had died giving birth to their fourteenth child.
Did you know? Calligraphy on the high gateway panels is written in slightly larger letters, so the script appears uniform in size when read from the ground.
03 Akbar's Tomb
India · 8.2 km from Agra27.221° N 77.951° E
Adrianne Wadewitz · CC BY-SA 3.0 At Sikandra, on the old road from Agra to Mathura, the Mughal emperor Akbar lies beneath a building unlike any other imperial tomb of his dynasty.
Did you know? The tomb is reported to have cost about 1.5 million rupees to build.
04 Tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah
India · 2.9 km from Agra27.192° N 78.031° E
Rohit Sharma · CC BY-SA 4.0 Before the Taj Mahal there was this: a small, square tomb on the eastern bank of the Yamuna in Agra, often called the Baby Taj or described as a jewel box.
Did you know? Nur Jahan, who commissioned the tomb, and her husband Jahangir are themselves buried far away, in Lahore.
05 Fatehpur Sikri
India · 20.1 km from Bharatpur27.091° N 77.661° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Fatehpur Sikri was an imperial capital for barely fourteen years. The Mughal emperor Akbar had waited a long time for an heir, and when his son Salim, the future Jahangir, was born in the village of Sikri in 1569, he credited the prediction of the Sufi saint Shaikh Salim Chishti, who lived there.
Did you know? The Hiran Minar, studded with stone elephant tusks, is said to honour Akbar's favourite elephant, though it more likely marked the start of a line of mileposts.
06 Rumi Darwaza
India · 1.6 km from Lucknow26.871° N 80.912° E
Rishabhgpt · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Rumi Darwaza rises about 18 metres over the road in old Lucknow, a single colossal arch topped by a half-dome, its brick surfaces worked with intricate floral ornament.
Did you know? Its builder Asaf-ud-Daula was the fourth Nawab of Awadh and reigned from 1775 until 1797.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Uttar Pradesh?
- On our list, Agra Fort ranks first, followed by Taj Mahal and Akbar's Tomb.
- Why was Fatehpur Sikri abandoned?
- Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri as his capital in the 1570s but moved his court away about fourteen years later. Water shortage and the emperor's campaigns in the north-west are the reasons usually given.
- Why is the Tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah called the Baby Taj?
- It is a smaller white marble tomb in Agra, built by Empress Nur Jahan for her father, and its inlaid stone decoration anticipated the Taj Mahal, which was completed later.
- Who is buried in the Taj Mahal?
- The Taj Mahal holds the tombs of Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, and of Shah Jahan himself, who was later buried beside her.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Uttar Pradesh?
- In our collection, the places in Uttar Pradesh are most often mausoleums (3), forts (2), city gates (1) and monuments (1).
- How many places are on this list in Uttar Pradesh?
- The list covers 6 places.