The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) recently released photos of the restoration work that it undertook inside the locked rooms of Taj Mahal.
The locked rooms of the Taj Mahal are located in the basement of the Mughal-era mausoleum, which are barred from public viewing.
The ASI released the photos of the locked rooms of the Taj Mahal following ‘misinformation’ and demands for opening the locked rooms.
The ASI shared pictures of the underground cells of the historic monument.
The photos released by the ASI show two spots where maintenance work was recently carried out on the riverside of the Taj Mahal.
“The work of maintenance of underground cells on the riverside was taken up. Decayed and disintegrated lime plaster was removed and replaced by laying of lime plaster and traditional lime processing before application,” a newsletter from the ASI said.
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Recently, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court rejected a petition seeking to open 22 closed doors in the Taj Mahal.
The bench reprimanded the petitioner and asked him to conduct research on who built the monument, before firing the petition.
According to a BBC report, Ebba Koch, a leading authority on Mughal architecture and author of a magisterial study of the Taj, visited and photographed the rooms and passages of the monument during her research.
These rooms were part of a tahkhana or an underground chamber for the hot summer months. A gallery in the monument’s riverfront terrace consists of a “series of rooms”. Koch found 15 rooms arranged in a line along the riverfront and reached by a narrow corridor, the BBC report said.
There were seven larger rooms extended by niches on each side, six squarish rooms and two octagonal rooms.
The large rooms originally looked out onto the river through handsome arches. The rooms, she noticed, showed “traces of painted decoration under the white wash” – there were “netted patterns arranged between concentric circles of stars with a medallion in the centre”.