Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque)
Aurangzeb built this private prayer room inside Red Fort so he need not leave for midday prayers — British soldiers later stripped its gilded copper domes and sold them at auction, and the marble you see on the domes today is a colonial replacement, not what Aurangzeb commissioned in 1663.
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Completed in 1663 at Aurangzeb's personal expense — 160,000 rupees recorded in the court chronicle Ma'asir-i-Alamgiri — the mosque was built for intimacy, not ceremony. The 1857 looting by British Prize Agents, which exposed the domes to rain and rotted the prayer-hall ceiling, is legible in the fabric of the building: the white marble domes are a colonial replacement for the original gilded copper, while the mosque's name, Pearl Mosque, referred to its white marble from the very beginning.
What to look for
- White marble domes — replacements for the gilded copper stripped and auctioned by British Prize Agents after 1857
- Ornate floral carvings on the marble surfaces
- The compact scale of the enclosure: just 9 by 15 metres internally, built for a single emperor's private use
The ASI has closed Moti Masjid to visitors to prevent further structural damage — confirm access with Red Fort staff on arrival, as entry is not guaranteed.
Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) is one of 35 sights worth the detour in Delhi, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Delhi pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Delhi
- Red FortThe ramparts where Jawaharlal Nehru raised India's flag on 15 August 1947 still host that ceremony every Independence Day.
- Qutb MinarSuccessive dynasties handed this tower off across 170 years — Aibak started it in 1199, Firuz Shah Tughlaq capped it with a cupola in 1368.
- Humayun's TombThe red-sandstone ancestor of the Taj Mahal — commissioned by an empress, designed by Persian architects, and finished a century before Agra.
- Jama MasjidShah Jahan built his imperial mosque at the highest point of Shahjahanabad — the Mughal capital — and it was regarded as a symbolic gesture of Mughal power across India.
- Lotus TempleTwenty-seven marble petals, grouped in threes, fold into a single hall where any person of any faith walks in without condition.
- India GateAround 13,300 names carved in stone — soldiers lost across Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and the Afghan frontier.