Top 10 amusing facts about Taj Mahal that you surely don’t know

Each and everyone in India knows that Taj Mahal is one of 7 wonders I the world. A Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan made it in the memory of his loving wife Mumtaz Mahal. We all know it is a tomb and the pride of our nation. We know a lot about it but yet there are several things that we don’t know. Let’s have a look on some amusing facts about Taj Mahal that were previously not known to us:

1. It was in 1631 when Shah Jahan’s wife Mumtaz died while giving birth to their 14th child. And it was this fateful event which prompted Shah Jahan to make Taj Mahal for his lovely wife Mumtaj.

2. Taj Mahal changes its color depending on the light falling on the monument. It is pinkish in the morning, milky white in the evening and golden when the moon shines.

3. Taj is all symmetrical from everywhere, except the two pillars in the building. They are little tilted outwards so that whenever the building collapses, the pillars don’t fall on the tomb.

4. The tomb which is open to visitors is not the real tomb of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz. The real tombs are at the ground level which is two floors down. They are not open for tourists.

5. The Taj Mahal is almost 171 meters (561 feet) high, which makes it 5 feet taller than New Delhi’s Qutub Minar.

6. There are 28 types of precious and semi-precious stones used in the Taj Mahal due to which invaders attacked it several times until the final restoration work started in the 19th century.

7. There is a story attached with the construction of Taj Mahal that Shah Jahan ordered to chop off the hands of the workers who made Taj Mahal. It is a myth as the architect who made Taj Mahal had later laid the foundation of Red Fort.

8. The visitors punch at a wall in the Taj Mahal. It is known to only a few people that the place has earned a supernatural reputation as well. And the groundskeepers find the evidence in the form of superficial damage to the carving at the cross like structure at the very top of the Taj Mahal, against which visitors slam their knuckles.

9. The Mughal ruler, Shah Jahan who made this great monument in the memory of his wife fell severely ill 9 years before he died. This led to a situation when his son Aurangzeb fights him on the issue of succession. Aurangzeb won the fight and the throne till Shah Jahan recovered and imprisoned his father. Thus, Shah Jahan was not allowed to visit or enter Taj Mahal for the rest of his life.

10. The makers of Taj Mahal have architecture it brilliantly. They have employed an optical trick that when you move close to the building, it becomes smaller and when you move away from it, it becomes bigger. Locals say that when you visit Taj Mahal and leave, you take Taj Mahal with you in your heart.