Agra is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is 206 kilometers south of the national capital of New Delhi.

Agra is a major tourist destination because of its many Mughal-era buildings, most notably the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri, all of which are World Heritage Sites. Agra is a part of the Golden Triangle tourist circuit, along with Delhi and Jaipur.

The history of Agra before the Delhi Sultanate is unclear. A 17th-century chronicle called the Agra before Sikandar Lodi time (1488–1517) as an old settlement, which was merely a village, owing to its destruction by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. The 11th-century Persian poet Masud Sad Salman writes of an assault on the fortress of Agra, then held by King Jaypal, by Mahmud of Ghazni. Despite his surrender, Mahmud sacked the place. It was mentioned for the first time in 1080 AD when a Ghaznavide force captured it. Sikandar was the first sultan to move his capital from Delhi to Agra in 1504; its administration had previously been under Bayana. He governed the country from here, and Agra assumed the importance of the second capital. He died in 1517 and his son, Ibrahim Lodi, remained in power there for nine more years. He built several palaces, wells, and a mosque in the fort during his period. He was finally defeated at the Battle of Panipat in 1526. Between 1540 and 1556, Afghans, beginning with Sher Shah Suri, ruled the area. It was the capital of the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1648. The Marathas later took the city and then still fell to the British Raj.