Gol Gumbaz

The Gol Gumbaz, the "round dome" of Bijapur, now Vijayapura, in northern Karnataka, is a single colossal room. Four dark basalt walls, each about 62 metres long including the corner towers, enclose a hall roughly 41 metres across with no columns at all, and over it rises a hemispherical dome about 44 metres in external diameter, its crown some 54 metres above the floor. When it was built in the mid-17th century it was the largest dome in the Islamic world and remained the largest unsupported dome in India. Around its base runs a narrow gallery famous for its acoustics: a whisper against the wall can be heard on the far side of the dome, and a single clap returns as a string of echoes.

The mausoleum was built for Mohammed Adil Shah, seventh sultan of Bijapur, who came to the throne in 1627 and under whom the sultanate reached its greatest extent. Each ruler of the dynasty sought a grander tomb than his predecessor, and Mohammed meant to outdo the refined Ibrahim Rauza of his father, Ibrahim Adil Shah II. Work went on through his reign in three stages: a foundation and central platform, the basalt walls with seven-storey octagonal towers at the corners, and finally the brick dome laid in lime mortar. The architect's name is not recorded, though historians have suggested Malik Yaqut, who completed the city's Jama Masjid in the same reign. The dome needs no metal tension ring; it sits on intersecting arches forming two interlaced squares, a system of pendentives brought from Central Asia by way of Persia and almost unknown elsewhere in South Asia. When the sultan died in 1656 the plastering was still in progress, and some decoration was never finished. Beneath the central platform with its six cenotaphs, a crypt holds the real graves of the sultan, his two wives, a favourite, his daughter and his grandson.

Bijapur was the capital of the Adil Shahi sultanate, one of the Deccan states that rose after the Bahmani kingdom broke up, and the city is still dotted with its mosques, tombs and walls. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb took it in 1686, after which the tomb was largely abandoned. Under British rule the archaeologist Henry Cousens surveyed Bijapur in 1891, and in 1892 a museum was opened in the drum house of the tomb complex, which also includes a mosque and a garden. The dome was repaired in the 1930s and 1940s, and since 1962 the monument has been looked after by the Archaeological Survey of India. It is part of the group "Monuments and Forts of the Deccan Sultanate" on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list since 2014.

Getting there

The Gol Gumbaz stands in Vijayapura, about 2 km from the city centre, and the city is served by Vijayapura railway station. The nearest airport is Kolhapur Airport (KLH), about 155 km away in a straight line.