In 1639 Emperor Shah Jahan began a new capital at Delhi, called Shahjahanabad, and at its heart a walled palace of red sandstone beside the Yamuna River. The Red Fort, or Lal Qila, was finished in 1648, and its design is credited to Ustad Ahmad Lahori, who is also linked to the Taj Mahal.
Inside the walls were marble halls, gardens and channels of flowing water. In the Diwan-i-Khas, the hall of private audience, stood the famous Peacock Throne, carried off by Nadir Shah of Persia in 1739. Its walls still bear the Persian verse: "If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this."
After the uprising of 1857, the British exiled the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and turned the fort into a barracks. UNESCO listed it in 2007.
