Architecture
The Buland Darwaza is made of red and buff sandstone, decorated by carving and inlaying of white and black marble and towers above the courtyard of the mosque. The Buland Darwaza is symmetrical in plan and is topped by pillars and chhatris with Buland Darwaiosks on the roof, stylized battlement and small turrets and inlay work of white and black marble. On the outside a long flight of steps sweeps down the hill giving the gateway additional height. A Persian inscription on eastern archway of the Buland Darwaza records Akbar's conquest over Gujarat in 1601. It is 40 metres high and 50 metres from the ground. The total height of the Structure is about 54 metres from the ground level. It is a 15-storied high gateway that guards the southern entrance of the city of Fatehpur Sikri.
An inscription on the central face of the Buland Darwaza throws light on Akbar's religious broad mindedness.
Read more about this topic: Buland Darwaza
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.”
—John Ruskin (18191900)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad winds night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (18981936)