AGRA,INDIA-India's white-marble Taj Mahal turns yellow and green as the mausoleum weathers filthy air in the eighth-most polluted city in the world.
One of the seven Wonders of the World, the Taj Mahal flanks a garbage-strewn river and is often enveloped in the northern city of Agra with dust and smog from belching smokestacks and vehicles.
The Taj Mahal is rosy in the morning, milky white at night and golden when the moon shines. While this may once have been valid for the iconic pristine marble statue, the Taj has now been burdened by a mixture of pollution and bad management with a 24-hour yellow brown layer. Condemning the "lethargy" of restore efforts, India's Supreme Court has recently ordered the government to restore or demolish the Taj.
Located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh in northern Indian state, the Taj Mahal is one of the world's most iconically beautiful structures. Designed by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a monument to his sorrow, the poet Rabindranath Tagore called it "a tear flowing down the cheek of time" after the death of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal.
The Taj was made of translucent white marble, brought to Agra from the Rajasthan northwest Indian region. It was then incrusted with semi-precious stones including jasper, jade, turquoise, lapis lazuli, sapphire and carnelian stones. The entire complex along the riverside, including the gardens and surrounding sandstone walls, was completed in 1653.
The Taj has aged and darkened over the last four centuries as a result of natural oxidation processes – the marble equivalent of rust – but its aggressive surroundings have provided little support. It has been drilled in acid rain, coated in soot from industrial and domestic chimneys and eroded by pollutants from the atmosphere.