Agra is a major city in northern India, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, located on the banks of the River Yamuna. It has a population of 1,800,000.
Agra was a favored city of the Mughal emperors who ruled northern India between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, and who reached their peak of power and cultural achievement in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Agra has many buildings from this period, most famously the Taj Mahal (completed in 1653), mausoleum of the Empress Mumtaz Mahal and the Emperor Shah Jahan; and the Red Fort built by Shah Jahan's grandfather, the polymath emperor Akbar in the 1560s.