essay for historical monuments

The Inclusive Historian's Handbook

Memorials and Monuments

Memorials and monuments punctuate our lives. Many of us are taught to revere them early on—in town squares, at museums, throughout our national parks, and everywhere in between. We may repeat the ritual with our own children, who may someday bury us beneath smaller though no less meaningful monuments. All the while, we live our lives before the silent gaze of granite soldiers, towering obelisks, historic buildings, roadside crucifixes, memorial bridges, and no end of scattered mementos. Some of them were left by ancestors for reasons that may be obscured by time. Some appear as if overnight, often born of grief for a loved one lost to violence or disregard. People have given their lives in the service of monuments; others have killed to protect them. Love, hate, fear, faith, determination, and deception all inhere in our nation’s commemorative landscape. But what do we really know about these silent sentinels?

We know quite well from our vantage point in the early twenty-first century that memorials, monuments, and other expressions of our nation’s complex public memory are not, in fact, as silent as we might suppose. They have, rather, since the beginning of our national saga, witnessed and prompted impassioned dissent, vocal nationalism, and sometimes lethal violence. We know too from decades of scholarship that memorials and monuments trade in all matter of perceptual trickery. One person’s hero was another’s worst enemy. One town’s achievement meant another’s demise. One empire’s victory signaled the death of families and kingdoms and ecosystems elsewhere. Choices made about which of these memories to enshrine, and which ones to erase, are the messages that memorials and monuments convey today. In this sense, then, memorials are never silent, and they certainly do not reflect consensus. They are rather arguments about the past presented as if there were no argument.

We need monuments, even despite their tendency to misrepresent. At their best, monuments can bind us together and fortify our communities in the face of tragedy or uncertainty. They can also remind us that to be great is worthy of aspiration. The meaning of greatness, however, is never fixed. Indeed, how we define it—how, that is, we choose to remember—has become a matter of pointed concern, especially as Americans seek to expand opportunity among those whose forebears were so long erased from public memory. Is it possible to change a monument’s meaning once it has been built? Is there such a thing as a public memorial that respects the infinite diversity of the American public? These and other questions underlie what headlines and pundits characterize as our nation’s “monument wars,” longstanding contests of memory wherein the very meaning of citizenship is up for grabs.

Defining Terms : Memory, Commemoration, Monuments, and Memorials

Making sense of our monument wars and their history is complicated by the variety of words that are used, often interchangeably, to describe them. Words such as “monument,” “memorial,” and “commemoration” all share in their deep history a root in another complicated word: “memory.” Memory, of course, is as old as humankind, and perhaps older. Historians study memory, as do neuroscientists, physiologists, physicists, sociologists, philosophers, and others besides. The remarkable scope of memory studies and the field’s growth in recent decades, signals how deeply memory runs through all facets of modern life. Historians cannot make sense of memory alone. We have, however, made important contributions to the conversation, especially concerning memory’s capacity to shape ideas about nation and citizenship.

In the United States, for instance, leading memory scholars—including Michael Kammen, David Blight, James Young, and Erika Doss—have advanced a set of propositions, drawn from an array of social and cultural theory, that explain how memory promotes a common sense of American identity over time and across lines of difference. They include the possibility that, in addition to each person’s individual memory, there exists a collective memory too—a stew of facts and images and stories—that shapes and is itself shaped by our personal recollections. There is also the notion that memory can reside in objects and places, and that attending to these is one way that nations sustain our loyalties. Historians are concerned, too, with traumatic memories, such as those associated with war and genocide, and have recently begun to explore the monument’s capacity to aggregate and deploy deep wells of emotion. Running through all of this is an awareness that, if we listen closely, monuments can speak volumes about the intent of their makers. They usually tell us more, in fact, about the people who made them than whatever it is that they commemorate.

The monuments and memorials we are concerned with, then, are expressions of public memory. They are born of individuals whose personal memories get bound up by some common interest within some common corner of some community’s collective memory. The process whereby this confluence of individual memories is vetted and repackaged for public consumption is what we refer to as commemoration. Commemoration itself can be an event, such as is the case with some parades, festivals, and even the preservation of old buildings. What we witness in those instances is a process whereby individuals are instructed—both by watching and by participating—in the performance of fealty to a shared set of ideas about the past: the war was noble, our ancestors were great, remembering is patriotic. These are powerful lessons, so much so that commemoration tends to obscure the possibility of believing otherwise.

The terms that we use to describe the products of commemoration, words such as “monument” and “memorial,” may vary in purpose. “Monument,” for instance, usually refers to a commemorative structure or edifice, whereas “memorial” applies to almost anything—including buildings, books, roads, stadiums—that recalls the dead or the experience of profound loss. The Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C., is also a monument, because the structure itself functions as a well of national regard for Lincoln’s sacrifice and vision. Across town, however, only sports fans likely consider the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium a monument. Its tribute to Kennedy’s memory is in name alone. The rules are neither hard nor fast. The National Park Service, for instance, applies the designation “monument” to any unit—whether or not it foregrounds commemoration—that is established by executive order. More significant than these shades of meanings is the ubiquity of words such as “monument” and “memorial” in our daily lives.  Language reveals the extent to which memory surrounds us everywhere and always.

A Brief History of Commemoration in the United States

There is nothing that obligates Americans to remember in the ways that they do. Indeed, the nation’s founders railed against the excesses of memory. In their eyes, the corrosive influence of ancient traditions—such as those that sustained Britain’s monarchy and its landed aristocracy—was precisely what prompted the American Revolution. So how then did commemoration end up being so prevalent in the United States?

Two common explanations deploy two different histories: one deep, the other more recent. In the first case, the American preoccupation with commemoration, and especially the mingling of objects and memory, reaches all the way back to medieval Europe. The early Christian church, as the story goes, sought by the ninth century to entice converts by deploying an array of sacred objects, the so-called cult of saints’ relics. The appeal of these relics—bits of hair, bone, and other vestiges of bygone saints—resided in their power to connect worshipers to the divine, literally, through touch or by mere proximity. Elaborate rituals of belief grew up around these objects and the reliquaries that contained them. Increasingly their power mingled, in early modern Europe, with secular objects of curiosity gathered by explorers and exhibited alongside relics in cathedrals, princely chambers, and curiosity cabinets. Mastery of worlds, human and divine, might be had by whomever could amass the largest collection. Even mystics and clerics got in on the game, imagining elaborate memory theaters from within which one might see, and thus learn to recall, knowledge of all times and places. The ways of knowing associated with these practices, as has been shown by Stephen Greenblatt and cleverly illustrated by Lawrence Weschler, penetrated western culture so deeply that they travelled along with Europeans into North America. Modern-day museums thus recall the ancient impulse to venerate remarkable objects, as do memorials and monuments where visitors might commune with the past by bringing themselves near to all manner of markers and cenotaphs.

In the other case, made by historians such as Alfred Young and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, American commemorative preoccupations are associated with a sense of historical discontinuity that seems to have originated by the 1770s, during the “Age of Revolution,” and which reached a fevered pitch by at least 1900. This story explains why, though the founding generation distrusted monuments, the deaths of its most prominent leaders—first George Washington and, later, Thomas Jefferson—prompted an early wave of commemorative activity by the 1820s. The Civil War, of course, exacerbated this sense of historical rupture and set into motion a commemorative spree that has not yet abated. By the end of the nineteenth century, Americans erected obelisks, collected old things—clothes, quilts, furniture, tools, and more—opened museums, founded historical societies, preserved old homes, and staged fetes and festivals all in hopes of staving off their nagging concern that something had been lost amid the ravages of modernity. Their efforts, especially during the years spanning the World Wars, were so expansive that much of the commemorative infrastructure they built remains today.

Since World War II, Americans have experimented with new commemorative forms. During the postwar years, named municipal buildings and commemorative highways replaced a previous generation’s fondness for granite soldiers and obelisks. Monuments to shared loss have also become increasingly common. Inspired by Maya Lin’s widely influential 1982 Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, modern monuments often feature abstract forms and reflective surfaces in place of the figurative literalism preferred a century ago. Impermanent or impromptu memorials have also become a staple of modern commemorative practice. Mounds of stuffed animals, ghost-white bicycles, roadside shrines with hard-hats and t-shirts, car windows airbrushed with sentimental tributes, tattoos, and scores of commemorative websites all reveal our own era’s concern to mourn publicly. It is a shift, as Erika Doss argues, that signals a new period in our commemorative history, one wherein national belonging is reckoned emotionally in acts of public feeling.

The Contours of Memory

Commemorative trends notwithstanding, memorials and monuments are endlessly diverse insomuch as acts of public memory always reflect the particularities of time and place. An uneasy grid of concrete slabs recalls the Holocaust at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Germany. The “Door of No Return”—part of the Maison des Esclaves on Senegal’s Gorée Island—commemorates the terrors of the Atlantic slave trade. And a commemorative complex in Vietnam’s Quảng Ngãi Province testifies to the rape and slaughter of civilians by U.S. Army soldiers in a place Americans remember as My Lai. These monuments demonstrate that commemoration need not always seek resolution. Indeed, commemorating sites of shame offers an important corrective to triumphant portrayals of the past that inevitably obscure historical complexity. Monuments like these, that are indelibly bound up with American history abroad, also remind us that memory is not confined to national borders. The circulation for centuries of people, capital, and ideas has ensured that all of our memories are entwined within deep networks of global remembrance.

Some monuments and memorials seek to redress lapses in what is presented as “official” public memory. The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in Colorado, for instance, now insists—after more than a century of white Coloradans deliberately mischaracterizing the massacre as a battle—that the Arapaho and Cheyenne be reinscribed onto our national memory of westward expansion, which for generations has either omitted Native Americans or dismissed them as mere obstacles to progress. Such is the function of so-called counter monuments. Counter monuments, as James Young suggests, demand a reappraisal of collective memory by demonstrating awareness of their own contrivance. They do so, in some cases, by insisting on the inclusion of people—and, sometimes, entire segments of American society—that have been persistently absented from public memory. In 2017, Philadelphians honored Octavius V. Catto with a statue, the first ever in Philadelphia to commemorate an individual of African descent. Elsewhere, counter monuments do their work by modifying extant monuments or presenting them in a different light. Artist Krzysztof Wodiczko complicated our understanding of the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, Massachusetts, for instance, with a temporary 1998 installation that projected onto its sides towering videos of mothers torn by the loss of children to neighborhood street violence.

Removing or relocating monuments and memorials can also reveal the deep intensity of contested memory. Beginning in 2015, in response to a mass shooting at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, cities across the United States—including New Orleans, Baltimore, and Los Angeles—opted to remove monuments valorizing the Confederacy and white supremacy from courthouses and parks. Scores of these monuments had been erected throughout the twentieth century to legitimize white supremacy and otherwise shift Americans’ commemorative gaze away from the degradations of slavery. The removal campaign turned violent in August 2017 when white supremacists and their supporters rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, ostensibly in defense of a monument portraying Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Clashes with counter-protesters resulted in one death and multiple injuries, and appeared to many Americans as a metaphor for the heated debates about race and citizenship that consumed the nation during the presidential election of 2016.

Tomorrow’s Monuments and Memorials

Removal debates remind us that commemoration is always political. Even the most benign monuments are products of choices made about how to remember, what to remember, and how to pay for it all. Faced with this certainty, then, how might we create monuments today that speak beyond our immediate concerns, and to audiences who may not remember in the same ways that we do? History shows us that a good first step is to engage as many constituencies as possible in the commemorative process. Commemoration grows from conversation, and as such should include as many voices as possible. Archiving the conversations that produce monuments is another important step. By preserving a record of our deliberations over public memory, we leave for future generations an indication of what is at stake in our commemorative aspirations. Above all, we must remember that monuments and memorials are neither silent nor innocent. The harder we think about their meanings today, the more likely they are to speak with clarity tomorrow.

Suggested Readings

Allison, David B., ed. Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield/AASLH, 2018.

Bruggeman, Seth C., ed. Commemoration: The American Association for State and Local History Guide . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Doss, Erika. Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Duppstadt, Andrew, Rob Boyette, and Sgt. Damian J.M. Smith. “Planning Commemorations.” Technical Leaflet 241 . American Association for State and Local History.

Glassberg, David. “Public History and the Study of Memory.” The Public Historian 18, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 7-23.

Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Reconsideration of Memorials and Monuments . A special edition of History News 71, no. 4 (Autumn 2016).

~ Seth C. Bruggeman is an associate professor of history at Temple University, where he directs the Center for Public History. His books include Commemoration: The American Association for State and Local History Guide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), Born in the USA: Birth and Commemoration in American Public Memory (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), and Here, George Washington Was Born: Memory, Material Culture, and the Public History of a National Monument (University of Georgia Press, 2008). You can follow him on Twitter @scbrug and explore his website at https://sites.temple.edu/sethbruggeman .

Essay on Taj Mahal for Students and Children

500+ words essay on taj mahal.

Essay on Taj Mahal: Taj Mahal needs no introduction. This monument is on the list of the Seven Wonders of the World . No wonder people swarm in flies all year round to witness the magnificence of his beauty. This monument is located in India in the city of Agra in Uttar Pradesh. In other words, Taj Mahal marks the excellence of Mughal architecture.

Taj Mahal is one of the main reasons why India is famous. Many people even associate India with Taj Mahal. However, to me, more than the splendid architecture, it is the story behind it that appeals to me the most. This magnificent beauty stands strong as a symbol of the love of a husband to his wife. Moreover, it reminds us of the power of love and how it can set an example for generations to come.

Taj Maha – A Symbol of Love

The renowned Taj Mahal was brought to life by the vision of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan . He got this monument built for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal after she passed away.

To honor the memory of his loving wife, Shah Jahan ordered the finest artisans from all over the world to build it. He wanted to make something that had never been done before for anyone. The emperor wished to give the last gift to his wife whom he loved very much.

Even till date, people sing praises about Shah Jahan’s grand gesture. It makes you believe in love and appreciate it like never before. We also see how under the tomb lies the body of the eternal lovers. Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal are buried next to each other and even after death, they remained side by side.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Making of Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal was declared as a Heritage Site by UNSECO in 1983. What makes this monument so special? Why do people come from all walks of life to witness its magnificence? Taj Mahal is made from white marble. Subsequently, this marble was exported from various countries from all over the world.

Taj Mahal involves a lot of smart architecture. The four pillars that stand in the corners are inclined a little. This was done to prevent the monument from any kind of natural disaster. Shah Jahan spent a hefty amount of money in the making of Taj Mahal.

In addition, we see how the building of this structure required 20,000 workers approximately to get the work completed. Moreover, the architecture of Taj Mahal was inspired by several architecture styles like India, Turkish, Persian and more.

Furthermore, you will see a beautiful fountain in front of the Taj Mahal with water channels. The reflection of the Taj in the water just makes for a mesmerizing view. It looks nothing short of a fairyland. In conclusion, every Indian takes pride in the beauty of the Taj Mahal and its heritage. This monument is famous all over the world. Around 2 to 4 million people come to visit the Taj Mahal every year. The beauty and history of the monument attract people the most and makes it famous all over the world.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{ “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Who built the Taj Mahal?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Taj Mahal was ordered by Shah Jahan to build. It took around 20,000 workers to build it.” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Where is Taj Mahal situated?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”:”Taj Mahal is located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.”} }] }

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Find anything you save across the site in your account

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The Historian Scrutinizing Our Idea of Monuments

By Alexandra Schwartz

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof walked into a Bible-study session at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, and opened fire with a handgun, murdering nine Black congregants. Roof’s motivations were clear. He was a white supremacist who wished to start a race war, and he saw his actions as part of a distinctly American legacy. In the weeks before his massacre, Roof posed for photos at a number of Confederate sites, including a graveyard housing the Confederate dead and the Museum and Library of Confederate History, in Greenville, South Carolina. After the murders, officials in states such as Maryland, Missouri, and Louisiana, responding to public outrage, took down eleven monuments to the Confederacy. But, as the art historian Erin L. Thompson notes in her new book, “ Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments ,” the monuments didn’t stay out of sight for long. “Six quickly went back on view in different public locations, including cemeteries, battlefield sites, and a museum,” Thompson writes. Another was placed next to a ferry station on the banks of the Potomac. Others are in storage as plans to reërect them get under way.

It’s not hard to put up a monument in the United States, even when the cause it commemorates is long lost. Taking one down is another story. When New Yorkers heard the Declaration of Independence read aloud, on July 9, 1776, they rushed to destroy the equestrian statue of King George III that stood at Bowling Green, cutting off the monarch’s nose, chopping off his head, and parading with his severed limbs through the streets. More recently, though, the act of dismantling monuments has been decried as unpatriotic and an assault on the history they purport to represent, even as we tend to forget, or obscure, the history of the monuments themselves. Stone Mountain, in Georgia, the country’s largest Confederate monument, began, as Thompson writes, “as a pet project of the Ku Klux Klan”; Christopher Columbus, who never set foot in the continental U.S., is celebrated by statues across the country, in spite of the protests from Indigenous communities.

The contradictions that make up so much of American life are right there on display in our public art, which is why it seems to hold clues to our future as a nation, too. In her book, Thompson, a professor at the City University of New York, explores the stories behind a number of American monuments, the people who wanted them up, and the activists and community members who are fighting for them to come down. I recently spoke with her over Zoom to ask her about her discoveries. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.

Let’s start with the Statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol building, and with Philip Reid, one of the workmen responsible for it. A lot of people are probably vaguely aware that there is a statue on top of the Capitol. But I also think they probably don’t know what it represents, and they certainly don’t know the story of how it got there. So tell us: Who was Philip Reid?

He was an enslaved man owned by Clark Mills, who was the sculptor of the very first American bronze monument, a sculpture of Andrew Jackson. And the success of that sculpture—which still stands outside the White House—meant that he got hired for additional commissions, including to cast, in bronze, a statue symbolizing freedom to top the Capitol dome. It was started before the Civil War, and was put up only after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. So by the time it went up Philip Reid was free, but he worked on it while enslaved. And, in fact, Clark Mills bought additional people from the profits he made from the sculpture of Andrew Jackson.

This is the type of story that led me to write the book. A lot of the debates about monuments have focussed on the character of the person honored—you know, should we be honoring Robert E. Lee or not, et cetera. But I’m more interested in how these objects function as monuments, how they were made, why they were put up, how they’ve been used since. And so Reid’s story seemed really important, because to know that someone was forced to make this representation of a liberty that he didn’t have was deeply compelling to me. And the statue itself was modified under the direction of Jefferson Davis, who would, of course, become the President of the Confederacy—but at that point he was the Secretary of War, charged with supervising the decorations for the Capitol. He made the sculptor change the original design to not include a symbolization of emancipation. He thought that American freedom was the freedom of people who had always been free, had been born free—like him, not like Reid.

The symbol that Davis wanted to replace was a wreath, right?

It was a hat, the Pileus cap. My editor wouldn’t let me say that it’s the type of hat that Smurfs wear. [ Laughs. ]

A liberty cap. And what did they replace it with?

So she wears this Vegas-y headdress, which has an eagle and feathers. And it looks completely ridiculous now.

Right, the irony of trying to craft a symbol of freedom when America was deeply dependent on slavery created actual, practical problems in the representation of freedom.

Exactly. And those problems are hard to see because they were often simply disguised altogether. So it is extremely rare to see a Black person in public art until the twentieth century—even in, say, Northern Civil War memorials, though a large part of the Union forces were African American soldiers.

And, when Black people were included in public art, it seems like they were often included in ways that suggested subservience to their white liberators.

Yeah, and Frederick Douglass, for example, knew that this was a problem as soon as this art went up. He criticized a statue that still stands, in D.C., celebrating Lincoln’s granting of emancipation to African Americans. There’s this grovelling Black man kneeling in front of Lincoln. Ironically enough, that man’s face is modelled after an actual man, who escaped from slavery and then re-escaped after being kidnapped by men who wanted to send him back into slavery. This is Archer Alexander. So he liberated himself twice with no help from Lincoln, but has been made into a powerless recipient of the largesse of white Americans.

It seems like the question of what to do with monuments has sprung into the public eye almost overnight. I was interested to see you write that, before 2015, not a single Confederate monument had come down, but in the year after George Floyd ’s murder, in May of 2020, around a hundred and fifty monuments were destroyed or removed. That’s an enormous shift. I’m wondering whether you had given much thought to America’s monuments before 2020.

I just did the calculations over again, and, as of January 31st, a hundred and forty-two Confederate monuments have been removed since the death of George Floyd, along with seventy-two others, mostly of settlers and Columbus. But just to be picky about removal versus destruction—

Do be picky.

A lot of what I did in this book was ask questions that I thought were stupid. Like, there’s all these news stories of monuments being loaded on the backs of trucks and driven away, so where are those trucks going? And it turns out that no monument has been irrevocably destroyed but one: a single platter-size portrait of Columbus, which was removed from a monument in Connecticut. Otherwise, they’ve all been relocated or are in storage. The Charlottesville Lee monument, which was at the center of the Unite the Right rally in 2017—the city council awarded it to a local nonprofit, which proposed melting it down and giving the bronze to an artist for a new monument. But that process has been stalled by yet another lawsuit from Confederate-heritage groups. So people really, really want to keep these up.

Did I think about monuments before? I didn’t think so much about American monuments. I’m a classicist, and, to me, destroying a monument is a normal part of human life. Practically everything that I studied from ancient sculpture was at one point broken, thrown into a pit, buried, and then dug up again. So when protests started I realized that Americans are in this strange, exceptional period of history where we haven’t replaced a lot of our monuments in a long time, which is very unlike human beings.

The very first equestrian monument that Americans got, a statue of George III, lasted only six years before we tore it down upon reading the Declaration of Independence. So we used to destroy a lot of monuments. In the twentieth century, not so much.

And now there’s this sea change.

I don’t think it’s so much of a sea change. It’s a sea change among a certain audience. Something I did in the book was try and talk to activists who have been protesting particular monuments for, in some cases, decades—their entire adult lives—like Mike Forcia protesting a statue of Columbus in the Twin Cities.

I think the real change has been people who assume that they are praised by these monuments. They’re starting to rethink whether that praise is worth keeping up a monument that pains others.

Another thing that you highlight in your book is how hard it is to remove a monument by any kind of public or legal process. In the past year or two, we’ve seen these dramatic images of protesters tearing down monuments, and people get upset and say that isn’t the right way to go about it. But you write about how, even when people try to approach this in “the right way,” they can’t accomplish anything. I’m thinking specifically of what you write about the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, in Birmingham, Alabama. Do you want to tell that story?

I’m such a fangirl of Mayor Woodfin.

Birmingham’s Confederate monument celebrated a past that the city didn’t even have—Birmingham was founded well after the Civil War. It was put up in two parts at the turn of the twentieth century, both parts in response to unionization efforts among area miners. These were interracial efforts, and the city’s [leading citizens], who paid for the statue’s base and then the obelisk that went on top, wanted to persuade white workers that keeping within racial boundaries was more important than making a living wage.

By the nineteen-seventies, Birmingham was a majority Black city, and even less willing to have the monument. But, by the time discussion really started about taking it down, the Alabama state legislature had passed a law prohibiting the removal of monuments more than forty years old, which included this monument and almost all of the state’s Confederate monuments.

And there was simply no discussion possible, regardless of the wishes of the community, unless the majority of the state legislature changed the law. And this is true in a surprisingly large number of U.S. jurisdictions—that removal is not up for debate, it’s simply prohibited by law. Even in jurisdictions like New York, where there are no prohibitions, there’s no process for asking for removal or reconsideration of a monument. So these requests get lost in the bureaucratic shuffle.

But shortly after the death of George Floyd, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin saw protesters trying to take down the monument, essentially with their hands. And he decided—for public safety, and for the soul of Birmingham—to remove it, to break the law in an act of civil disobedience. The law would impose a fine of twenty-five thousand dollars on the city for any modification of the monument, and he decided it was well worth it. Other [Alabama] cities have also taken down Confederate monuments and paid the fine. In reaction, the state legislature has heard proposals to make the law much stricter, to make any officials who authorize removal, or even vote in approval of removal, personally liable for fines. So it’s no surprise to me that, when you have these very punitive laws, the only way out is going to be an act of civil disobedience.

One argument we hear a lot is that, if we remove monuments, we’ll be getting rid of the history that they represent. But it often seems that what they represent is not necessarily history but the time in which they were erected, as in the case of Birmingham. The period after Reconstruction was a major moment for the creation of monuments to the Confederacy. Why was that?

Well, public art has always been a way for humans to shape societies, to tell members of a community what their roles should be. And a lot of Civil War monuments did precisely that. You might think they went up right after the Civil War, but this is not usually true. In the decades immediately following the war, monuments went up in cemeteries; they were monuments of mourning to commemorate personal losses. But the monuments we see today generally went up only starting in the eighteen-nineties, when Reconstruction was over, and when Jim Crow laws had been passed to reduce the possibility of Black engagement in the political and economic life of the South. They went up as a reminder that this is how things should be—a fantasy of antebellum life where everyone knew their places, and no one was trying to ask for more, whether it was Black Southerners trying to ask for political participation or working-class white Southerners trying to gain more wealth.

So, yeah, I think it’s always more interesting to ask how a monument has shaped its society versus what sort of past it’s commemorating. Monuments are not how we learn about the past. Often, they erase the past. A Northern Civil War monument that shows only white soldiers, for example, is erasing the participation of Black soldiers.

You mention working-class whites. I learned from your book about the pose called parade rest. Why was it so important for the makers of so many Confederate monuments to depict Confederate soldiers in parade rest?

The vast majority of Civil War monuments are not of a named officer but of an unnamed low-ranking soldier. Almost all of these are standing in parade rest, which, according to infantry instruction manuals of the period, was a pose soldiers would take not when fighting—not when doing anything heroic—but when listening to a drill instructor.

So it’s a posture celebrating obedience. Soldiers were forbidden to speak when standing in this position. It’s a posture of listening to your betters, your leaders. And it’s no surprise that these monuments went up in periods of labor unrest, when they could try to convince the descendants of soldiers that they were part of a glorious tradition—not of rebellion but of obedience. These sculptures were paid for by factory owners, by white-collar entrepreneurs, at a time when they were trying to control their employees.

Let’s talk about Stone Mountain, the huge Confederate memorial, in Georgia, that depicts Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. One thing I didn’t know was that the person responsible for it also created Mount Rushmore—which, of course, features Abraham Lincoln. What’s the story there?

I really want Gutzon Borglum’s life to be, like, a Netflix miniseries.

Starting with the name.

So what we see today, carved into a mountain outside Georgia, was finished only in the mid-nineteen-seventies. But the project started in the nineteen-tens, when a Confederate widow called in a sculptor to carve a bust of Lee on the mountainside. And that sculptor was Gutzon Borglum, who was a rather strange choice. He was the son of Danish immigrants. He lived in Connecticut. He had made his name sculpting Lincoln, and in fact had named his son Lincoln, during a bid to be hired to make the Lincoln Memorial. He lost out to Daniel Chester French, and defected to the Confederate cause to make Stone Mountain.

And he upsold the widow rather dramatically. He said that a single bust of Lee would look as insignificant as a dime falling on a rug. Instead, he proposed more than seven hundred figures, all at least thirty-five feet tall, sweeping across the mountain. And he did so because he was in a lot of debt, and he’d get paid a percentage of the cost. So the bigger it was, the more it celebrated the Confederacy, the more money he would make.

What could go wrong?

The story of Stone Mountain has so many wild details. Borglum joined the newly revived Ku Klux Klan to solidify his ties to the patron of the project. He teamed up with Klansmen [who embezzled] donations intended for the sculpture. He was eventually fired, and the head of Lee that he carved on the mountain was blasted off. He almost went under from debt, but, just in time, he signed a contract to make what would become Mount Rushmore.

So I think that Stone Mountain is more a memorial to a con than to the Confederacy. It was in limbo for a long time, and it was only revived in the fifties, when Georgia’s anti-integration governor bought the property for a state park, hoping to make it a rallying point for resistance to integration. The Klan was revived there. Some people debate whether Lee, Jackson, and Davis should be represented, but I don’t really care. This history—the monument as a rallying point for anti-integration, as a birthplace of the Klan not once but twice—seems to me more important for making decisions about what its fate should be.

It’s kind of impossible to talk about Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore without talking about kitsch. Kitsch seems endemic to the whole form of monuments, maybe because art made for the purpose of veneration can’t admit irony, and I guess kitsch could be described as the ironic total lack of irony.

Are there any monuments you came across that you thought had aesthetic value?

I think monuments have the privilege of boredom. They are designed to give us a view of history and then discourage us from asking further questions. And so in one way they’re easily understood, and in another way they’re totally impenetrable, because you’re not meant to see any of the complexities. So they’re usually not that interesting aesthetically.

They can be very interesting when modified by artists today. But some of them are just not very good at all. In Tompkins Square Park, in New York City, there’s a monument to Samuel Cox, who voted against emancipation as a congressman. And even when the statue went up, in the late nineteenth century, the New York Times said that it was, aesthetically, not very good. It looks like three toddlers in a trenchcoat. But the statue received police protection in 2020.

So monuments get the privilege of preservation by being put in the category of art, and thus get to disseminate ideas even if we mostly all agree that those ideas no longer characterize the community. It doesn’t make sense to me that, just because it’s in bronze or marble, it gets to stay up as a loudspeaker.

Monuments obviously affect people who don’t want to see them. But then there are cases such as Dylann Roof, who visited Confederate landmarks before he committed his massacre, in 2015. It seems like these monuments still have a lot of power, even if for a lot of us they’re background noise. I wouldn’t know, walking through Tompkins Square Park, whom I was passing—I’d probably be looking for whomever I was going to meet. It’s interesting to see which monuments seem to lose their power, and then regain their power, depending on how much attention we’re paying to them at any given moment.

Yeah, monuments can reactivate. And that’s what gives you hope for the future. I think just making a monument vanish does nothing. But taking a monument down, or modifying it in a way that lets us talk about our future, how our community should change, can be incredibly powerful. So these monuments still have a role to play in the shaping of America—but toward equality, not oppression.

What are the most successful instances of what you mentioned before—contemporary artists working to modify or respond to monuments?

I wrote in the book about the Houston Museum of African American Culture, which took in a Confederate monument from a Houston park and had artists respond to it. Willow Curry made a really powerful video in which she’s directly addressing the sculpture, telling it that it can’t intimidate her and her fellow-citizens. That was very powerful.

There’s a sculpture outside the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, of a generic Indian on a horse. It isn’t meant to be derogatory, but it’s sort of insultingly nonspecific. The museum commissioned an Indigenous artist, who created a garden around the sculpture, including corn stalks that grew up and partially concealed it. I think it made people curious—why is there corn here, in front of the museum?—and encouraged them to think through what the sculpture was meant to do, what art is meant to do, in terms of representing America to itself.

And I think what we call graffiti on the monuments have been powerful reactions. There are plans under way to put the Jefferson Davis sculpture, from Richmond’s Monument Avenue, back on display, still coated in the pink paint that was thrown on it. That’ll be a reminder of this period of public debate.

Monuments can often seem to be an immovable part of our landscape. Where did you grow up?

Were there any monuments there that were a significant visual presence in your childhood?

Every day on my way to school, we would drive past a Mexican restaurant with a life-size sculpture of a bull and a bullfighter in front of it, in the parking lot. The bull was very anatomically correct, and college students would frequently paint the testicles in different colors, and then the restaurant would have to repaint them black. I was going to this private religious school where life was very restricted, where questioning authority was very much not allowed. And this act of playful vandalism was so encouraging to me as a sign that you could, in fact, question authority—you could make a change in the landscape.

Well, this brings us back to kitsch. A lot of monuments really are funny. I’m thinking of the monument you describe, completed in 1841, of George Washington , by the sculptor Horatio Greenough. Washington is seated, and his head is very clearly the head of George Washington, but he’s in a sort of Zeus pose, with one arm raised, his fingers pointing to the sky, and he’s naked from the waist up, with a torso that is chiselled both literally and figuratively. I think even at the time people thought this was a joke, right?

Yeah. I love how his jowls morph into pecs in this completely unrealistic way. Nobody thought this was a good idea. Well, some people did, but it did not translate well to the public. Which I think is a problem with monuments in general, right? It is difficult to represent the intellectual achievements of someone. Throughout history, intellect, power, or qualities of leadership have just been translated into physical perfection. So you get superhero George Washington instead of an actual portrait.

This sculpture was very interesting to me because it was commissioned for the rotunda of the Capitol, but got kicked out after only a few years. And, when I started writing the book, I thought that there hadn’t been that many removals of public art. In fact, there have been plenty of removals, so long as the art was seen as insulting by people in power. So if congressmen are saying, “We feel like only superheroes can become President if you have this sculpture of the chiselled George Washington in our midst, we don’t like that,” it’s going to go pretty quickly.

It seems to me that we’ve started to move away from figurative monuments. Maya Lin really brought us there with her Vietnam Veterans Memorial , and I’m also thinking of the reflecting pools at the World Trade Center. Is there something useful about the nonfigurative—that it doesn’t put all this weight on the body to represent universal human experience?

It really depends on whom you ask. Right now we’re arguing about what monuments should come down. We’re going to have even bigger arguments when we start to talk about what should replace them.

Very often, people in the art world will propose nonfigurative monuments, because they think those can evoke emotions without running into the problems of discriminatory representation. But, almost always, community groups want a figural monument to commemorate someone who is more important to that community. And this leads to a lot of disputes. Zachary Small in the New York Times wrote an article about a lawsuit over an abolitionist monument in Brooklyn. Essentially, the community group was, like, “Wait, you want this to be nonfigural? No, we are suing to prevent that.” So there’s going to need to be a lot of discussion, which is not what usually happens. Usually, monuments get air-dropped into a community by an arts authority or a funder without any discussion. If I were czar of monuments, they would all be nonfigural. But I am not, fortunately—too many headaches.

More New Yorker Interviews

Dean Baquet on his tenure as the Times’ executive editor , and the state of journalism.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the “shit show” in Congress —and her vision for how to change it.

Min Jin Lee on her arrival in America and why she reads the Bible before writing .

David Hockney shows off a new series of paintings and discusses the work he has left to do.

Stevie Nicks talks about style, spirits, and writing one of her best songs .

Patricia Lockwood discusses her “ atrocious” early writing and how getting COVID rewired her brain.

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

Support award-winning journalism and get a free tote bag. Subscribe today .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Robert Sullivan

By Graciela Mochkofsky

By Casey Cep

By Maya Jasanoff

The preservation and restoration of historical buildings and landmarks

Time flows. It keeps flowing and running constantly, and so does the community and the world along with it. There is this debate about what life and death are, and the intermediate catalyst is time, but the whole debate falls short of the hypothesis when it comes to architecture. Architecture – the walls built by the ancestors, the structures which were a refuge for many people, the institutions built to house communities , the tall columns and buttresses which connected the people to Thee, these spatial narratives keep living on and on and on. Architecture is a dead static element in space, the intervention of people is what gets life into it. Architecture at its best represents a balanced, symbiosis of aesthetic values peculiar to works of art and the material requirements of practical utility. To preserve its rich heritage and cultural inheritance becomes of utmost importance.

The Life and Death of Architecture

Over the years, monuments representing the ambitions, aspirations, and beliefs of people have been constructed by civilizations all over the world in a state-of-the-art level of extravagance and immovable scales. These structures are not only valuable in terms of architectural significance but also historical, artistic, and social importance. Many people have survived to the present day and are living proof of the lengthy timeline of human history as well as the numerous ways in which the past has contributed to the present. The survival of this timeless, cultural legacy is currently threatened more than ever before by economic and demographic developments of the world. The preservation and restoration of historical buildings and landmarks are crucial for safeguarding cultural heritage and ensuring the legacy to future generations for appreciation of their valour and grandeur and to learn from the past.

Humankind has always given significance to certain locations or constructions. Others connected them with a specific natural spirit or a divinity – leading to pagan practices and succeeding civilizations with impeccable and intricate architectural structures. There are several locations across the world that exhibit the same type of continuity. In contrast, the temples and long-forgotten empires which were forgotten and vanished later were discovered by archaeologists and unearthed their urns. Even though it would be ethical, it would not be possible to save all. Of the historical buildings. More development and change, as well as new requirements for the ever-growing population of people, would unavoidably eliminate much of the past glory. There may not be much of an aesthetic or historical loss. The choice, though, may be very challenging.

Although there have been fortunate exceptions, the rapid social and economic transformation of the 21 st century , particularly in urban areas, has generally proved to be too much for the communities. In order to ensure that adequate and long-term measures are taken nationally to guarantee the preservation of cultural heritage, nearly all countries have found it necessary to introduce legislation and establish institutions or organizations that are either run by the governing bodies or operate under governmental auspices.

Importance of the Life of Architecture – Living Structures

Cultural Heritage: Physical examples of cultural legacy include historical structures and landmarks . They reflect historical society ideals, workmanship, and different architectural styles. Preserving them allows a scope to comprehend and connect with history, customs and sense by preserving traditions and identity of structures.

Education and Research: For researchers, academics, and students, historical landmarks and buildings become a rich and wide source of information. They provide insights into a variety of historical facets, including social circumstances, stratification, economic conditions, engineering, architecture, politics and the arts. Preservation allows for ongoing research and educational possibilities.

Tourism and the Local Economy: Historical sites frequently draw visitors who support regional economies. The preservation and restoration of these sites can boost tourism, resulting in employment, more capital, income, and a boost to the local economy.

Community and Feeling of a Place: Historical structures and landmarks add to a community’s personality, character and sense of space. They act as anchor points and represent the pride and identity of the community. They provide continuity and communal cohesiveness when they are preserved. 

The Current Scenario and A Plea for Change

But in contrast, historical buildings face various threats such as natural ageing, weathering, pollution, and lack of maintenance. Over time, these factors can lead o decay and deterioration. Securing funding and resources for the upkeep, repair, and conservation of historical buildings can pose significant challenges, especially for public or lesser-known structures. Adapting historical structures to meet modern safety and accessibility standards with respect to age, gender, sex and any factor that drives the 21st-century norms while preserving the landmark’s character can be a delicate balance. Finding solutions for this would indeed be a complex task.

Historically and artistically important buildings have been disappearing at an ever-increasing rate during the 21 st century. The natural processes that turn stone into gravel, sand, clay and soil; lumber into humans; and metals into oxides and salts are partially to blame for such damage or wear. Such materials deteriorate under the influence of geo – and climatological elements. Cataclysms have taken their toll. Floods, earthquakes , volcanic explosions, and violent storms have destroyed a few of the most important structures in the long history of human civilization. Regardless, the most serious threat to these important structures is humankind. Wars, the action of vandalism, negligence and recklessness towards the structures and their maintenance, have razed countless monuments; and economic and social factors pose the biggest challenge to the conservation of the existing material cultural heritage.

The protection of cultural heritage, encouragement of education and research, promotion of tourism and economic progress, and upkeep of a feeling of identity and community all depend on the preservation and conservation of historical structures and landmarks. Although there are obstacles, maintaining these systems is worthwhile for cultures all around the world since the advantages exceed the disadvantages. The vision in the coming days would be imagining, connecting, embracing and respecting the old and new fabric of the city and its architecture. Architects and archaeologists should strive to respect the environment and architecture in its existing beauty and amenities and provide hygienic surroundings, so as to afford and offer its citizens a healthy and active lifestyle.

• Unesdoc.unesco.org. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000001105 (Accessed: 10 July 2023). 
• Preserving heritage: 10 restoration projects transforming historic … Available at: https://www.architectandinteriorsindia.com/projects/preserving-heritage-10-restoration-projects-transforming-historic-landmarks (Accessed: 10 July 2023). 
• Admin (2022) The importance of restoring historical monuments, IEREK. Available at: https://www.ierek.com/news/importance-restoring-historical-monuments/ (Accessed: 10 July 2023). 
• Garg, P. (2023) An overview of restoration of monuments in India, RTF | Rethinking The Future. Available at: https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/architectural-community/a8485-an-overview-of-restoration-of-monuments-in-india/ (Accessed: 10 July 2023). 
• Jayewardene-Pillai, S., Ranaweera, A. and Kaushalya, B. (2017) Geoffrey Manning Bawa: Decolonizing Architecture. Colombo: The National Trust Sri Lanka. 
• Radnić, J., Matešan, D. and Abaza, A. (2020) Restoration and strengthening of historical buildings: The example of Minceta Fortress in Dubrovnik, Advances in Civil Engineering. Available at: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ace/2020/8854397/ (Accessed: 10 July 2023). 
• Subcommittee,  the W.H.P. (2023) Historic preservation  , WBDG. Available at: https://www.wbdg.org/design-objectives/historic-preservation (Accessed: 10 July 2023). 
• Ultimate Guide for Saving Historic Buildings (2021) Wolfe House & Building Movers. Available at: https://www.wolfehousebuildingmovers.com/historic-building-preservation-guide/ (Accessed: 10 July 2023).

Srivatsa Koduri is a fresh graduate as an architect from R.V. College of Architecture, Bangalore with a passion for storytelling in architecture and design. With a keen eye for detail and a deep appreciation for design, he delves into the intricacies and the untold stories of buildings - the symbolism and metaphors attached to them, exploring their historical significance and cultural impact concerning the metaphysical aspects of the design. Literature, different art forms, and his love for travel are vital to his architectural perceptions.

The role of architecture in urban planning and development

Stationery design for weddings: latest trends and inspiration

Related posts.

The Role of Architectural Archives in Restoration Projects

Using meme culture to express social issues in architecture

The Theoretical Role of Soft Furnishings in Shaping Spatial Narratives

The New Architects: Designing the Future in Virtual Realms

Buildings redefining the Architectural trends

Revitalizing Vernacular Architecture

• Architectural Community
• Architectural Facts
• RTF Architectural Reviews
• Architectural styles
• City and Architecture
• Fun & Architecture
• History of Architecture
• Design Studio Portfolios
• Designing for typologies
• RTF Design Inspiration
• Architecture News
• Career Advice
• Case Studies
• Construction & Materials
• Covid and Architecture
• Interior Design
• Know Your Architects
• Landscape Architecture
• Materials & Construction
• Product Design
• RTF Fresh Perspectives
• Sustainable Architecture
• Top Architects
• Travel and Architecture
• Rethinking The Future Awards 2022
• RTF Awards 2021 | Results
• GADA 2021 | Results
• RTF Awards 2020 | Results
• ACD Awards 2020 | Results
• GADA 2019 | Results
• ACD Awards 2018 | Results
• GADA 2018 | Results
• RTF Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2016 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2015 | Results
• RTF Awards 2014 | Results
• RTF Architectural Visualization Competition 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2020 – Results
• Designer’s Days of Quarantine Contest – Results
• Urban Sketching Competition May 2020 – Results
• RTF Essay Writing Competition April 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2019 – Finalists
• The Ultimate Thesis Guide
• Introduction to Landscape Architecture
• Perfect Guide to Architecting Your Career
• How to Design Architecture Portfolio
• How to Design Streets
• Introduction to Urban Design
• Introduction to Product Design
• Complete Guide to Dissertation Writing
• Introduction to Skyscraper Design
• Educational
• Hospitality
• Institutional
• Office Buildings
• Public Building
• Residential
• Sports & Recreation
• Temporary Structure
• Commercial Interior Design
• Corporate Interior Design
• Healthcare Interior Design
• Hospitality Interior Design
• Residential Interior Design
• Sustainability
• Transportation
• Urban Design
• Host your Course with RTF
• Architectural Writing Training Programme | WFH
• Editorial Internship | In-office
• Graphic Design Internship
• Research Internship | WFH
• Research Internship | New Delhi
• RTF | About RTF
• Submit Your Story

Looking for Job/ Internship?

Rtf will connect you with right design studios.

History, Memory, and Monuments:   An Overview of the Scholarly Literature on Commemoration

Kirk Savage, University of Pittsburgh

            “Monuments are good for nothing,” a North Carolina Congressman declared in 1800.    In the founding years of the United States, many argued that democracy and the spread of literacy had made commemorative rituals and monuments obsolete, a leftover from the days of monarchy and superstition.   Reflecting on Congress’s reluctance to fund a monument to George Washington, John Quincy Adams famously observed   that “democracy has no monuments.”    “True memory,” many Americans liked to claim, lay not in a pile of dead stones but in the living hearts of the people.

            Since those early days of the Republic, democracy has changed its tune.   Commemoration has become utterly commonplace, deeply rooted in the cultural practices of the nation.   Not only did Americans come to embrace traditional forms of commemoration, but they pioneered new practices, particularly in the remembrance of war dead.   Today American commemorative practices have multiplied and spread in ways no one could have imagined, extending now even into the solar system (with a monument to the fallen Columbia crew on Mars).

            While commemorative practices have been expanding for nearly two centuries, the academic literature on commemoration has mushroomed in the past twenty years.   So many scholars from such a variety of disciplines have joined the “memory boom” that mapping the field has become effectively impossible.   Moreover, scholars often talk at cross purposes with one another or simply in ignorance of each other’s work.   This essay, while by necessity impressionistic, will try to pinpoint key questions, debates, findings, and trends.

            The first key question might be, what is commemoration?   Dictionary definitions tell us that to commemorate is to “call to remembrance,” to mark an event or a person or a group by a ceremony or an observance or a monument of some kind.   Commemorations might be ephemeral or permanent ;   the key point is that they prod collective memory in some conspicuous way.

            French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs ushered in the modern academic study of collective memory with his book The Social Frameworks of Memory (1925) in which he argued that all memory – even personal memory – is a social process, shaped by the various groups (family, religious, geographical, etc.)   to which individuals belong.   In an even more influential posthumous essay, “Historical Memory and Collective Memory” (1950), published after his death in a Nazi concentration camp, Halbwachs insisted on a distinction between history and collective memory: history aims for a universal, objective truth severed from the psychology of social groups while “every collective memory requires the support of a group delimited in space and time.”   Thus our view of the past does not come primarily from professional historical scholarship but from a much more complicated and interwoven set of relationships to mass media, tourist sites, family tradition, and the spaces of our upbringing with all their regional, ethnic, and class diversity – to name just a few factors.   Just as personal memory is now understood to be a highly selective, adaptive process of reconstructing the past, shaped by present needs and contexts, so collective memory is a product of social groups and their ever evolving character and interests.   Hence the now commonplace notion that collective memory is “constructed,” amidst a perpetual political battleground.   Almost everyone now agrees with American historian Michael Kammen’s assertion, made in his magisterial volume Mystic Chords of Memory (1991) that “societies in fact reconstruct their pasts rather than faithfully record them, and that they do so with the needs of contemporary culture clearly in mind – manipulating the past in order to mold the present.”

            Yet even when collective memory is qualified in this way, many scholars remain skeptical of the notion.   In a 2001 essay on “ The Memory Boom in Contemporary Historical Studies” social historian Jay Winter asserted that we need “a more rigorous and tightly argued set of propositions about what exactly memory is, and what it has been in the past.”   Some scholars even question the existence of collective memory.   The very idea of collective memory seems to assume a unity of purpose – as if many different people somehow share a common mind – that belies the reality of even the smallest family group, let alone a diverse nation like the U.S.   James Wertsch has argued in Voices of Collective Remembering (2002) that collective memory is not a thing in itself but many different acts of remembering, shaped by overarching social forces and cognitive frameworks such as narrative. Susan Sontag in her final book Regarding the Pain of Others (2002) went even further and argued that there isn’t a collective memory at all but there is “collective instruction,” a complex process – left mostly unexplained in her book – by which certain ideas and images become more important than others.

            “We speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left,” French scholar Pierre Nora has famously argued ( Realms of Memory , orig. 1984).   Nora claimed that modern societies invest so heavily in “lieux de memoire” [memory sites, such as monuments, museums, archives, and historic places] because these have replaced “real environments of memory,” the living memory that was once nourished spontaneously in premodern societies.   Nora’s claim echoes the anti-monument rhetoric of early American republicans.   Like the republicans before him, Nora suspected that modern commemorations were invented to make up for a lack of organic unity within modern nations and societies.   David Lowenthal’s book The Past Is a Foreign Country (1985) made a similar point, arguing that modern societies try desperately to resurrect the past because it has already disappeared from living culture.   While this core insight has been productive – modernity does indeed disrupt old patterns of collective memory – it is also reductive, failing to take into account not only the importance of commemoration in premodern societies but also the persistence of the past and “spontaneous” practices of memory in modern societies such as the U.S.  

            Nora’s attention to sites of memory and the politics surrounding them has had a profound influence on American scholarship, but many scholars who cite him simply ignore or overlook the assumptions that underpin his work.   Whatever their theoretical allegiances, scholars keep circling around the same basic questions.   Who guides the process of remembering and towards what ends?   Why do specific commemorative projects take particular forms?   How do commemorative practices actually shape social relations and cultural beliefs (rather than simply reflecting them)?   Inevitably this last question raises the key issue of how conspicuous acts of commemoration like public ceremonies and monument building relate to the more everyday practices of schooling, reminiscing, and unconscious habit that carry knowledge and tradition from one generation to another.   This question is the least directly addressed issue, probably because it is the hardest to research, though it haunts much of the scholarship on memory.

            In the U.S. the “memory boom” seems to have been inspired largely by two phenomena: the coming to grips with the Holocaust, which began in earnest in the 1970s, and the unexpected success of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated in 1982.   While the literature on Holocaust memory is now vast and intricate, James E. Young’s book The Texture of Memory (1993) has become indispensable.   Focusing on the unique problems posed by the trauma of the Holocaust, Young surveyed a range of memorial solutions in Europe and the U.S. from traditional heroic figurative monuments to avant-garde installations that deliberately undermined the very premise that monuments are permanent.   Throughout the book Young argued that monument building is a living process, in some sense always unfinished; no matter how much a monument may pretend to be eternal and unchanging, its meaning always evolves as its viewers bring new concerns and understandings to it.    Since the Holocaust was so clearly an event to be pondered rather than celebrated, monuments could never hope to fix its meaning for all time.

            The phenomenal power and popularity of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial almost immediately revived scholarly interest in the subject of public monuments.   Traditionally, public monuments had been the most prestigious forms of commemoration because they were designed as permanent showcases of public memory, to last for the ages.   But in the twentieth century, scholars came to consider the public monument a dead form.   Lewis Mumford wrote in The Culture of Cities (1938) that “the notion of a modern monument is a veritable contradiction in terms.”   While public monuments did continue to be erected in the mid-20 th century, scholars paid little attention until Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial offered a new, distinctly contemporary memorial format, an open solution – to follow James Young’s suggestion – that deliberately encouraged multiple meanings and uses. This spawned an immense literature on the monument itself and a renewed interest in how monuments and other public practices of commemoration work in modern society.

            Fittingly, one of the most frequently cited books on American public memory, John Bodnar’s Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (1992), began with a discussion of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.   Bodnar, an eminent social historian of ethnic and immigrant communities, was dissatisfied with the all too frequent assumption that commemorations were top-down affairs imposed by ruling elites on a passive populace.   The success of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial demonstrated to him that commemoration interwove what he called “official” and “vernacular” memory, official memory driven by the need of the state to mythologize itself and maintain the loyalty of its citizens and vernacular memory driven by the need of ordinary people to pursue their social and political concerns in their local communities.   Surveying a broad range of local commemorations including monuments and anniversaries, Bodnar argued that national patriotism worked to “mediate” or reconcile the competing interests of official and vernacular memories.   While Bodnar’s distinction between official and vernacular can break down in practice, his book has helped establish that commemoration “involves a struggle for supremacy between advocates of various political ideas and sentiments.”

            An interesting example that complicates Bodnar’s framework is Melissa Dabakis’s book, Monuments Of Manliness : Visualizing Labor In American Sculpture, 1880-1935 (1998), which studied various intersections of class, gender, and politics in the generally elite form of monumental sculpture.   Her investigation of the competing monuments to the Haymarket protest in Chicago in 1886 – one to the police, one to the anarchists – demonstrated that the “struggle for supremacy” was not only a conflict over which version of events would become officially enshrined in public space but also a shifting political conflict between left-wing and right-wing groups.   Ironically the official police monument had a more “realistic” vernacular form and definite vernacular appeal, at least among police recruits, while the anarchist monument had a more elite form laden with art-historical associations.

            Art historians like Dabakis, trained to study both the patronage and the reception of works of art, have realized for decades that monumental works become especially contested arenas, precisely because the work has a high public profile.   One of the earliest and best studies of U.S. monuments was Michele Bogart’s Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930 (1989).   Bogart’s book centered on the golden age of the public monument, a time when sculptural monuments proliferated not only in New York but throughout cities across the continent.    Her book traced the rise of an unabashedly elite genre of edifying commemoration at the end of the nineteenth century, supplied by well-known artists and their powerful political patrons.   But the story concluded with a fascinating account of how this elite consensus unraveled in the early twentieth century, as various groups – such as newly enfranchised women – began to acquire a voice in the process and to challenge the dominant sculptural language.   Since then that story has been extended by scholars such as Andrew Shanken, whose 2002 essay in Art Bulletin focused on the mid-twentieth century movement to replace sculptural monuments with “living memorials” (utilitarian memorials such as highways, parks, and concert halls).    Throughout the twentieth century memorials increasingly transformed from mere sculptural objects into more complex spaces, often with museum or archival functions.   Benjamin Hufbauer’s book Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory (2005) has shown how gargantuan Presidential libraries have become a dominant type, overshadowing or even supplanting the older hero-on-a-pedestal that had once been the preferred type of monument to a great leader.

              As noted above, however, traditional public monuments never disappeared, and they continued to be a powerful form of commemoration even as they lost their appeal to cultural elites.   Karal Ann Marling and John Wetenhall’s Iwo Jima: Monuments, Memories, and the American Hero (1991) is a study of one such monument, the Marine Corps War Memorial erected in Arlington, Virginia in 1954.   Their book embedded the monument within popular culture, where the iconic image originally came from (a wartime newspaper photo) and where it continues to live and thrive.   The phenomenon in which particular monuments have become icons of the nation has been studied in books such as Marvin Trachtenberg’s Statue of Liberty (1976), Rex Alan Smith’s Carving of Mount Rushmore (1985), Christopher A. Thomas’s The Lincoln Memorial and American Life (2002), and most recently Nicolaus Mills’s Their Last Battle: The Fight for the National World War II Memorial (2004).   Albert Boime in The Unveiling of the National Icons: A Plea for Patriotic Iconoclasm in a Nationalist Era (1998) demonstrated the authoritarian and exclusionary character of many of these icons, although he did not fully take into account what Bodnar might call the vernacular attachment to iconic forms of commemorative art.

            Washington, D.C. has received a great deal of attention because it is the commemorative heart of the nation.   The role of the Capitol building in commemorating the western expansion of the nation, and the defeat of Indians who stood in the way, has been examined in Vivien Fryd, Art And Empire : The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815-1860 (1992).   Other aspects of the Capitol’s commemorative program have been explored in American Pantheon : Sculptural and Artistic Decoration of the United States Capitol , a collection of essays edited By Donald R. Kennon and Thomas P. Somma (2004).   The development of the “monumental core” of the capital city has been much studied, but the single best volume on the national Mall as a commemorative landscape remains The Mall in Washington, 1791-1991 , edited by Richard Longstreth (1991).    Countless specialized studies on commemorative practices in the capital have been produced – on parades, ceremonies, cemeteries, city plans, outdoor sculpture – but surprisingly few serious synthetic studies of how the city has worked as a commemorative landscape.  

            More scholarly work in this direction is likely as the collective memory field continues to expand beyond its traditional base in sociology, history, and art history and embraces the work of geographers, landscape historians, ethnographers, archaeologists, and other academic practitioners. Richard Handler and Eric Gable’s enthnographic study of America’s most famous living museum, The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg (1997), is an excellent example, investigating how the historical lessons of this site are continuously reshaped or even ignored as they are put into practice by reenactors and consumed by tourists.    Much of the newer work is in essay form.   Geographer Derek Alderman, for example, has investigated the issue of commemorative street naming focusing on Martin Luther King, Jr., in a series of articles in professional geography journals.   Some recent work has been collected in anthologies, such as Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape (2001), edited by archaeologist Paul A. Shackel; Social Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives (2002), edited by Jacob J. Climo and Maria G. Cattell; and Places of Commemoration : Search for Identity and Landscape Design (2001), edited by Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn.   What all this work tends to have in common is an effort to map individual commemorative sites within larger contexts of remembrance – landscapes, geographic and administrative units, and social networks created by tourism, professions, and other factors.

            This should remind us that commemoration entails not only building, naming, or shaping physical sites.   Commemoration as a practice also involves ritual acts in and occupations of public space as well as other kinds of performance and consumption that may leave no lasting trace on the landscape.   W. Lloyd Warner’s classic study The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans (1959) was an early examination of the role of patriotic parades and other symbolic observances in civic life.   David Glassberg’s American Historical Pageantry : The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century (1990) examined the craze for commemorative pageants in the beginning of the past century, but this phenomenon has a long history in the U.S.   David Waldstreicher’s In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes : The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (1997) and Sarah J. Purcell’s Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America (2002) both showed that in the early national period, festivals and anniversaries helped overcome partisan and class divisions and cement a national identity.   In our own time, new electronic media have greatly expanded and altered the terrain of commemoration.   Marita Sturken’s Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (1997) has made a pioneering contribution in this area; her study examined commemoration across many different media, by charting the ways in which memories of the victims of national crises circulated throughout American culture in films, monuments, medical practices, and domestic grieving turned public.   Yet George Lipsitz’s Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (1990) has argued that even in age dominated by television and commercial culture, popular traditions of storytelling and festivity among disenfranchised groups, such as working-class blacks in New Orleans, have still played a part in upholding their own versions of the past.

            All these diverse commemorative practices come together most powerfully around the remembrance of war.   It is no surprise that much of the literature on commemoration in the U.S. deals with war and its aftermath.   G. Kurt Piehler’s Remembering War the American Way (1995) has remained a useful synthetic study, but the literature has grown to the point where synthesis now seems quixotic.   The memory of the Civil War has stood out as a particularly fertile topic.   In recent years a great deal of work has been done on memory and race, as scholars from numerous angles have shown how the commemoration of the Civil War helped to shape new racial relations within American society – removing African American soldiers from mainstream public memory, defeating the dream of racial equality, and advancing the cause of white supremacy.   David W. Blight’s ambitious synthesis Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001) has become the indispensable reference for this argument.   The book surveys an enormous range of commemorative practices from oratory to pageantry to monuments and beyond.   More specialized studies of the racial relations of war memory include Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (1997), Paul A. Shackel, Memory in Black and White: Race, Commemoration, and the Post-Bellum Landscape (2003), and Mitch Kachun, Festivals of Freedom : Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915 (2003).   Recent studies have made ever more nuanced analyses that interweave the issue of race with gender, class, and region.   Exemplary collections along these lines include Where These Memories Grow : History, Memory, and Southern Identity (2000), edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and Monuments to the Lost Cause : Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory (2003), edited by Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson.

        In addition to reshaping racial relations and beliefs, the scale of the Civil War dramatically changed and expanded commemorative practices, creating a new cult of the veteran and new modes and technologies of remembering the war dead – innovations that preceded comparable developments in Europe by years or even decades.   For the first time, photographers shot images of battlefield corpses, a profound shift in the understanding and memorialization of warfare analyzed in studies such as Timothy Sweet, Traces of War : Poetry, Photography, and the Crisis of the Union (1990) and Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs : Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (1989).   The emergence of veterans organizations and their role in promoting the memory of the common soldier have been explored in Stuart McConnell’s Glorious Contentment : the Grand Army of the Republic, 1865-1900 (1992) and in Cecilia Elizabeth O'Leary’s To Die For : The Paradox of American Patriotism (1999).    Kirk Savage in Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves has examined the resulting democratization of war memorials, and the phenomenal spread of a new type of ordinary-soldier monument.   Another innovation, the creation of national soldier cemeteries such as Gettysburg, was briefly examined as a precedent for twentieth-century European practices by historian George Mosse’s Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (1990).   Since then this line of research has been extended by others such as Susan-Mary Grant in a series of essays, most recently in the journal Nations and Nationalism (2005).

            Battlefields too have been witness to dramatically changing patterns of commemoration, and thus have posed intricate problems for their stewards, most notably the National Park Service.   Edward T. Linenthal in Sacred Ground: Americans and their Battlefields (1991) examined the ways in which battlefields from the Revolution to WWII have been transformed into “sacred” landscapes which various groups fight to protect from political or racial or commercial defilement.   Any commemorative narratives that stray from the narrowly defined script of military heroism become suspect.   For instance the National Park Service’s efforts to expand the historical significance of Civil War battlefields beyond military history into social and political issues such as slavery have encountered resistance both inside and outside the agency, as Paul Shackel has shown in his case study of Manassas ( Memory in Black and White ).   More recently Jim Weeks in Gettysburg : Memory, Market, and an American Shrine (2003) has called into question the notion of the sacred by arguing that tourism and the marketplace have profoundly shaped even the most revered battlefield from its very inception.   He has shown that, as cultural norms have changed, the standards of appropriate commemorative behaviors have also changed – sometimes in surprising ways.   For example, battle reenactments originated as commercial entertainments that elites discouraged as frivolous, but in the past two decades have grown into a wildly popular participatory sport, with ever more stringent standards of authenticity.   Ironically, the hundreds of regimental and officer monuments that were once the heart of the commemorative landscape have now become intrusions into the “authentic” experience of the past!

            Besides battlefield reenactments, another major new participatory phenomenon of memorialization is the spontaneous offering of personal mementos at national memorials, which began in the early 1980s at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.   Kristin Ann Hass has examined the roots and meanings of this phenomenon in Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1998).   At the same time recovery efforts and reverence for the bodies of the war dead have reached new extremes of emotional and financial cost, as Thomas M. Hawley has recently investigated in The Remains of War : Bodies, Politics, and the Search for American Soldiers Unaccounted for in Southeast Asia (2005).   All of these developments indicate an extension and transformation of the popular sphere of memory practices of the late nineteenth century.   Ordinary citizens increasingly have become the subject and the actor in commemorative initiatives, even as the power and cost of the “military-industrial complex” have grown mightily.

            In recent times the remembrance of war has become connected almost inextricably with the issue of trauma.   Once again the Holocaust and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial have served as the key landmarks in this process.   Young’s Texture of Memory and Sturken’s Tangled Memories have shed light on the new importance of victimization within commemorative practices.   Geographer Kenneth E. Foote’s study Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (1997) examined how Americans have dealt with landscapes marked by war, mass murder, and other traumatic events.   In a related development, the remembering and forgetting of Indian removal, confinement, and extermination have become increasingly important subjects in studies of national historic sites such as Dispossessing the Wilderness : Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (1999) by Mark David Spence,   and The Politics of Hallowed Ground : Wounded Knee and the Struggle for Indian Sovereignty (1999) by Mario Gonzalez and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn.   Edward Linenthal has created the most extensive body of work on trauma and commemoration, in a series of meticulously researched books on subjects spanning from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first: Sacred Ground , Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum (1995), and The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory (2001).   Since 9-11, the subject has become even more important, and numerous scholars have already entered the field.   Two new examples include Savage’s study of the “therapeutic memorial” in an essay in the collection Terror, Culture, Politics:   Rethinking 9/11 , edited by Daniel Sherman and Terry Nardin (2006), and Terry Smith’s examination of the contemporary struggle over iconic architecture in Architecture of Aftermath (2006).

            While work on commemoration continues to multiply, and to examine ever more carefully how memory practices penetrate all facets of our collective life, much work remains to be done on the actual impact of all these practices.   Few scholars have attempted to theorize the relationship between commemoration and tradition, what we might call the exterior and interior faces of historical consciousness.   On the one hand are public sites and rituals of memory, and on the other hand are ingrained habits of thought and action that persist in individuals, families, and communities across long spans of time.     While few scholars would agree with Nora that interior memory has disappeared, most scholars have focused on the exterior struggles to construct memory in one form rather than another.   One of the only scholars to argue against this trend has been social scientist Barry Schwartz, who has written a series of articles and books on American Presidents in historical memory.   In Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (2000) Schwartz has argued that memory is not constructed anew in each new commemorative project; instead, he has asserted that in a democratic society historical facts have serious weight and help create “core elements” of memory that persist over long periods of time.   Yet his belief in an authentic “core” memory led him, ironically, to downplay certain historical facts, such as the outright fraud and hucksterism involved in “assembling” the log cabin in which Lincoln was supposedly born.   (For more on the log cabin story, see Dwight Pitcaithley’s meticulously researched essay in Shackel’s Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape .)   In fact, historical errors and deliberate distortions abound in the landscape of commemoration, as James W. Loewen’s amazing study, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (1999), has so amply demonstrated.   But Schwartz’s point remains well taken: scholars must take into account not only the changing politics of commemoration but also the stubborn persistence of traditions and beliefs – some of which persist even when they conflict with historical fact or common sense.  

            This perspective might have helped scholars prepare better for the emotionally charged controversy over the Smithsonian’s ill-fated Enola Gay exhibit, which was intended to mark the 50 th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima by putting the event in historical context.   The controversy was a particularly dramatic example of how the work of historians, based on supposedly apolitical principles of evidence and analysis, came into conflict with powerful “memory constituencies,” whose long-cherished beliefs about the righteousness of the American military cemented their group identities as veterans and patriots.    Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Englehardt’s History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (1998) untangled this controversy and showed how the partisan politics and “culture wars” of the time helped fuel it.   At the same time the book showed how the Enola Gay fiasco was not simply another episode in the “politics of commemoration.”   The controversy transcended the politics of the moment and became a classic confrontation between history and collective memory – anticipated in Halbwachs’ original distinction – where history inevitably loses precisely because it lacks the unshakeable beliefs of psychically invested constituencies.   Some of the contributors to History Wars asked whether the “patriotic” narratives of commemoration could be expanded and humanized to encompass the multiple realities of war, to bring the longstanding traditional stories of triumph into contact with more tragic stories of the human cost and moral ambiguity of warfare.   The question has no easy answer.

            One pioneering effort to integrate the various realms of internal and external memory, of invisible traditions and visible histories, is Martha Norkunas’s Monuments and Memory: History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts (2002).   Her book traced the changing relationship between the public, mostly masculine face of memory in Lowell – in honorific monuments and historical sites – and the largely oral traditions, passed on by women, that preserved the memory of those who kept the community intact and functioning outside the public eye.   While her study would benefit from more analysis of the interaction between these realms of memory, her book points in a useful direction.   Likewise, Bodnar’s distinction between vernacular and official memory remains intuitively useful, but needs further refinement, retesting, and revision in order to understand better how these realms of memory interpenetrate one another.   This might help explain, for example, the persistence and power of military commemoration.   How does the inner/vernacular memory of women, ethnic groups, and other ordinary Americans help support the outer/ official   memory of such a quintessentially top-down, masculine institution as the military? Pursuing questions like these would eventually help bridge the gap between the spectacular “politics of commemoration” and the more inconspicuous workings of tradition.   How the past is produced, consumed, internalized, and acted upon will no doubt remain a rich and complex problem for scholars as they work further to extend and integrate the approaches outlined in this essay.

Essay on Monuments of India

Students are often asked to write an essay on Monuments of India in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Monuments of India

Introduction.

India is a country rich in history and culture. This is reflected in the numerous monuments found across the nation. These monuments are a testament to India’s glorious past.

The Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal, located in Agra, is one of India’s most famous monuments. It’s an ivory-white marble mausoleum built by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife.

Qutub Minar

In Delhi, Qutub Minar stands tall. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is the world’s tallest brick minaret, showcasing the architectural brilliance of the Mughal era.

These monuments are not just structures, but symbols of India’s rich heritage and diverse culture. They remind us of the country’s historical journey.

250 Words Essay on Monuments of India

India, a country with a rich history and diverse culture, is adorned with numerous monuments that stand as proud reminders of its glorious past. These architectural marvels, each with a unique story, reflect the country’s artistic, cultural, and historical heritage.

Architectural Diversity

Indian monuments, ranging from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization sites to the majestic Mughal and British-era edifices, showcase the country’s architectural diversity. The intricate carvings of Ajanta and Ellora caves, the grandeur of the Taj Mahal, and the imposing forts of Rajasthan are testament to the exceptional craftsmanship of the bygone eras.

Symbol of Cultural Heritage

Monuments serve as symbols of India’s cultural heritage. They embody the traditions, beliefs, and values of the people who built them. For instance, the Konark Sun Temple in Odisha, with its exquisite stone carvings, is a testament to the Sun-worshipping culture prevalent during its construction.

Monuments and National Identity

Monuments also contribute to the formation of national identity. They remind us of historical events, instilling a sense of pride and unity. The India Gate, a war memorial in Delhi, is one such monument that evokes nationalistic sentiments.

Preservation Challenges

Despite their significance, many Indian monuments face preservation challenges due to factors like pollution, vandalism, and lack of maintenance. It’s crucial to address these issues to ensure that these symbols of our past continue to inspire future generations.

In conclusion, monuments of India are more than just architectural structures; they are tangible links to the country’s rich past, reflecting the diverse cultures, traditions, and historical events that have shaped the nation’s identity.

500 Words Essay on Monuments of India

India, an ancient civilization adorned with a rich historical and cultural heritage, is home to numerous monuments that stand as silent spectators to the country’s vibrant past. These edifices, epitomizing the architectural prowess and artistic sensibilities of the bygone eras, offer a fascinating glimpse into India’s chronicles of evolution, conquest, and resilience.

The Grandeur of Mughal Architecture

The Mughal era, known for its opulence and grandeur, has left an indelible mark on India’s architectural landscape. The Taj Mahal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is a testament to the Mughal’s architectural acumen. Built by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, this white marble mausoleum symbolizes the zenith of Mughal art and culture.

The Red Fort in Delhi, another iconic Mughal monument, stands as a symbol of India’s struggle for freedom. It was from this fort that the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, hoisted the national flag on August 15, 1947.

The Magnificence of Ancient Temples

India’s ancient temples, renowned for their intricate carvings and sculptural work, give us a glimpse into the spiritual and artistic inclinations of our ancestors. The Sun Temple at Konark in Odisha, designed in the shape of a colossal chariot, is an architectural marvel of the 13th century. The temple’s detailed stone carvings display an advanced understanding of astronomy and geometry.

The Brihadeshwara Temple in Tamil Nadu, built during the Chola dynasty, is another architectural wonder. The temple’s vimana (tower) stands at an astonishing height of 216 feet, and the shadow of the vimana never falls on the ground, a feat that continues to baffle architects and historians.

Monuments as a Reflection of Cultural Diversity

India’s monuments are not just architectural masterpieces but also mirrors reflecting the country’s cultural diversity. The Sanchi Stupa, a Buddhist monument, is an emblem of peace and harmony. The Ajanta and Ellora caves, with their intricate paintings and sculptures, showcase the coexistence of Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, underlining India’s pluralistic cultural fabric.

India’s monuments are a testament to the country’s rich historical and cultural legacy. They embody the artistic genius, architectural prowess, and the cultural, religious, and social dynamics of different periods in Indian history. These architectural marvels, standing tall and proud, remind us of our roots and inspire us to value and preserve our heritage. As we move forward, it is crucial to respect and protect these monuments, for they are not just structures of brick and stone, but the soul of India, narrating tales of its glorious past.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Monsoon in India
• Essay on Modern India
• Essay on Legal Education in India

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Website Inauguration Function.
• Vocational Placement Cell Inauguration
• Media Coverage.
• Certificate & Recommendations
• Privacy Policy
• Science Project Metric
• Social Studies 8 Class
• Computer Fundamentals
• Introduction to C++
• Programming Methodology
• Programming in C++
• Data structures
• Boolean Algebra
• Object Oriented Concepts
• Database Management Systems
• Open Source Software
• Operating System
• PHP Tutorials
• Earth Science
• Physical Science
• Sets & Functions
• Coordinate Geometry
• Mathematical Reasoning
• Statics and Probability
• Accountancy
• Business Studies
• Political Science
• English (Sr. Secondary)

Hindi (Sr. Secondary)

• Punjab (Sr. Secondary)
• Accountancy and Auditing
• Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology
• Automobile Technology
• Electrical Technology
• Electronics Technology
• Hotel Management and Catering Technology
• IT Application
• Marketing and Salesmanship
• Office Secretaryship
• Stenography
• Hindi Essays
• English Essays

Letter Writing

• Shorthand Dictation

Essay on “Historical Monuments of India” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Historical monuments of india.

Essay No. 01

Indian History is full of the rise and fall of many kingdoms and empires. Monuments, built y the kings and they perform of every period throw light on the past history of India. these monuments exhibit the glory of India and are part of our cultural heritage. Almost all states of India boast of some or the other important historical monuments. Thousands of tourists visit India to have a glimpse of its important historical places.

Taj Mahal is one of the most famous and beautiful buildings of the world. Taj Mahal was build by Emperor Shah Jahan as the tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. It matchless beauty draws visitors from all parts of the world. The taj mahal got the highest ranking among the Seven Wonders of the World after the biggest online poll at www.new7wonders.com . Part forms Taj Mahal there are other historical monuments in Agra.

Red fort is one of those monuments which enhance the grace of Delhi. Red fort was also built by shah Jahan the Mughal emperor. The architecture of this building has a splendid impact of red stone and marble works. it has delicate carving on every possible surface.

Qutub Miner’s also a significant historical monument. The construction of Qutub Minar was started by Qutub-ud-din Aibek in twelfth century. But it was completed by his successor Iltutmnish. the Minar rises over 230 feet. The walls of the Minar are intricately carved and inscribed with verses from the Holly Quram. It is often viewed as a symbol of the military might of the Turko Afghan dynasty. Delhi also boasts of historical monument like Purana Qila, humayun’s tomb Jantar Mantar and many more.

Hyderabad is famous for its charming minarets Charminar. The city is often identified with the majestic Charminaar which stands at the center of the old city. It was built by Muhammad quil Shah. Charminar with its enormous size and majestic splendor attracts a number of visitors. Hyderabad has many other famous monuments like Golkunda Fort, Purani Haveli Tombs of Qutub Shahi kings etc.

There are a number of such monuments that are not only historically famous but also have religious significance. Puri is well known for a twelfth century temple called Jagannath erected in honour of the Hindu god Vishnu. It begun by king chodagangaeva and completed by king Ananga Bhima Deva iii. it is very vast temple.

Golden Temple of Amritsar is also known as Darbar Sahib. It is a great pilgrimage center of the Sikhs. The holy temple was completed under the direct control and supervision of Guru Arjan Dev. It’s foundation stone was laid by a renowned Muslim divine Main Mir. The Guru intended to keep the temple open to people of all castes creeds and faith a. so it was given four door women each direction. it has a lire pool around it. During Maharaja Ranjit Singh reign the lower half of the temple was decorated with marble while the entire upper half was in laid with copper converted over by gold plate. Hence it is known as golden temple. Some other religious monuments are Badrinath temple, Dilwara temple Dakshineshwara temple,  Kailashnath temple ,Seven pagoda , Lotus temple Rameshwaram temple.

In British era too some important monuments were constructed. These monuments have their own important place in Indian history. India gate was constructed in the memory of those Indian soldiers who were killed in world war i. gateway of India was built to commemorate the visit of the first ever British Monarch King George V and Queen Mary in 1911. There are a number of other monuments built by the British. These are Rashtrapati Bhawan Parliament House Victoria Memorial.

Al these monuments are visited by millions of tourists actors the globe throughout the year. These monuments are among the best a in the world for their archaeological value design and historical significance but it is a disturbing fact that we have no looked after these monuments properly.

The majority of them are in a bad shape. Even the most famous monuments like Taj Mahal , Qutub Minar ,  Lal Qila have been belated. Nearby industrial areas and markets create pollution which is harmful for these monuments. The government must a take initiative to protect these monuments. Proper care of these monuments enhances their life. A committee of experts should be formed to study the present condition of the monuments and the steps needed to be taken to protect them. Proper attention and initiatives of the government can only save these historical monuments from ruining away.

Essay No. 02

The Taj Mahal, popularly considered as one of the wonders of the world, is a remarkable creation synthesized by the human virtues of artistry, endurance, aesthetics and the spirit of adventure; and inspired by the emotions of love and adoration. Situated on the banks of the river Yamuna, it was built by the seventeenth century Mughal Emperor, Shahjahan, in memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz. The superior craftsmanship of its builders, and the high quality of the materials used to build it, ensure the building against possible ravages by the elements of Nature. The structure, as a whole, retains its luster and reflects its glory to the extent that, it continues to arouse awe and admiration in the numerous people who visit it round the year.

The greatness of the Taj Mahal is not confined to its fantastic beauty, both inside and outside. It is perhaps the only structure of its kind anywhere, in which marble as a building material has been used to create such marvellous effects. While the main ‘onion’ dome, minarets and the outer walls gleam in natural light, the deep-set doors called `aiwans’, and balconies get filled with faint reflected light, which creates an aura of mystery.

Though the. Taj Mahal is visited round the year, it may be seen in all its splendour on moon-lit nights, preferably in winter. It seems as though the charm and beauty of the building is enhanced several times by such a setting. In the rainy season, however, the marble turns to a hazy grey, giving the structure on the whole, a melancholy appearance.

Like any other object of beauty, the Taj Mahal also attracted attention ‘based on two different motives. If some saw it as a culmination of virtuous human endeavour, and, therefore, a source of inspiration, others considered it as a tempting target meant to be exploited. If those in the first category have raised the prestige of the Taj Mahal worldwide, those in the second have vandalized it and deprived it of much of its original beauty. The precious stones and other ornamentation that adorned the Taj Mahal, have from time to time been plundered by the various rulers and dynasties that followed the Mughals.

In modern times, however, the threat to the Taj Mahal is rather indirect. The focus on development in and around the city of Agra is a cause of serious atmospheric pollution in the region. As the main building material of the Taj Mahal is marble, such air pollution can at once cause the decline of its beauty and its physical destruction.

It is a matter of great relief that the people and the authorities have become aware of the modern threats to the Taj Mahal and have started adopting suitable measures to save the monument. It should be the fervent hope of all that the various salvaging ventures succeed. Such a success will ensure that the Taj Mahal as ‘a thing of beauty will remain a joy forever’!

About evirtualguru_ajaygour

commentscomments

It is a nice essay .

Super essay

Hmmm…Yes

Waw| This Information Is Very Usefull For 10th and 12th class students. It will help to the students to understand about ancient and Medival history of India.Very effective Information.

This helps me a lot to understand the history of India n Taj Mahal

No expressions used

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Quick Links

Popular Tags

Visitors question & answer.

• Md shoaib sarker on Short Story ” The Lion and The Mouse” Complete Story for Class 10, Class 12 and other classes.
• Bhavika on Essay on “A Model Village” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.
• slide on 10 Comprehension Passages Practice examples with Question and Answers for Class 9, 10, 12 and Bachelors Classes
• अभिषेक राय on Hindi Essay on “Yadi mein Shikshak Hota” , ”यदि मैं शिक्षक होता” Complete Hindi Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Download Our Educational Android Apps

Latest Desk

• Samkaleen Bhartiya Mahilaye  “समकालीन भारतीय महिलाएं” Hindi Essay, Nibandh 1000 Words for Class 10, 12 Students.
• Nijikarn – Gun evm Dosh  “निजीकरण: गुण एवं दोष” Hindi Essay, Nibandh 1200 Words for Class 10, 12 Students.
• Bharat mein Mahilaon ke Rajnitik Adhikar  “भारत में महिलाओं के राजनीतिक अधिकार” Hindi Essay, Nibandh 700 Words for Class 10, 12 Students.
• Bharat mein Jativad aur Chunavi Rajniti “भारत में जातिवाद और चुनावी राजनीति” Hindi Essay, Nibandh 1000 Words for Class 10, 12 Students.
• Example Letter regarding election victory.
• Example Letter regarding the award of a Ph.D.
• Example Letter regarding the birth of a child.
• Example Letter regarding going abroad.
• Letter regarding the publishing of a Novel.

Vocational Edu.

• English Shorthand Dictation “East and Dwellings” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Haryana General Sales Tax Act” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Deal with Export of Goods” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Interpreting a State Law” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.

A Visit to a Historical Place Essay [100, 120, 150, 250 Words]

A Visit to a Historical Place Essay: The historical places are much of educational and historical value. n this article, you are going to learn how to write an essay or a paragraph on a visit to a historical place. Here we’ve provided 4 short and long essays (100, 120, 150, and 250 words). These essays/paragraphs will be helpful for the students of all the classes (class 1 to class 12). So, let’s begin.

Table of Contents

A Visit to a Historical Place Essay: 100 Words

Recently our school organized an educational trip to the Taj Mahal, Agra. The Taj Mahal is the most beautiful monument built in the Mughal period. It is one of the wonders of the world. It was built by Emperor Shah Jahan in the memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

This gateway of Taj Mahal is built with the use of Red Sandstone. There is a beautiful garden that begins at the main gateway and ends at the base of the monument. The building is made of pure white marble. It took twenty thousand workmen and twenty years to build. The monument is built on the bank of the river Yamuna.  It was the most beautiful building I had ever seen.

Also Read: Essay on a Visit to a Hill Station 

A Visit to a Historical Place Essay: 120 Words

Last Sunday, we went to the Red Fort by a specially hired bus. Along the entrance two rows of shops selling various objects of art besides selling handicrafts. During the Mughal times, this was known as Meena Bazaar. After crossing the lawn, we reached the historic building known as ‘Naubat Khana’. Then we saw ‘Diwan-e-Aam’ or the Hall of Public Audience.

Then we went to the ’Rang Mahal’ which was a place of pleasures and richly inlaid with precious stones in the Mughal period. There is a ‘Khas Mahal’ beside the Rang Mahal. It has a beautiful marble screen. The Red Fort also has the War Memorial Museum where weapons used in the First World War are exhibited. We got to see many historical things that we read in our books. We enjoyed the trip very much.

Also Read: Essay on a Visit to a Book Fair

Essay on a Visit to a Historical Place: 150 Words

My dream came true when last month our history teacher arranged a trip to Agra for us. It was 24 October when we reached there. That very afternoon we went to see the famous Taj Mahal. It is a masterpiece of architecture-all in marble. We admired the four more mosques with tall slender minarets and the huge central dome. The surroundings lend beauty to it. The mausoleum stands in the center of a big garden with marble water channels, rows of fountains, and stately cypress trees.

The tombs of Shah Jahan and his wife lie beneath the dome. We went to see the Agra Fort too. When Shah Jahan was confined there, he spent his time gazing at the mausoleum of his creation from his prison window. We saw things that we had read about in our books-the Dewan-i-Am, the Diwan-i-Khas, the Pearl Mosque, and the Shish Mahal. A visit to a place of historical importance does make history real and interesting. It was a wonderful trip.

A Visit to a Historical Place Essay: 200-250 Words

A visit to a historical place is very educative. It instructs as well as entertains us. I am fond of visiting historical buildings. Last year, I went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. In the evening, we went to see the Taj Mahal. I had heard a lot about the beauty of the Taj Mahal. But reality surpassed the descriptions that had been given to me.

It is a wonder in marble, a specimen of Mughal art. Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan in the sweet memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It was built about three hundred and fifty years ago.  It stands on the right bank of the river Yamuna. The gateway which is made of red stone is very beautiful. The garden is very lovely. The tall dark cypress trees, smooth green lawns, and the beds of flowers are pleasing to the eyes. The fountains flow here and there.

The main building is made of white marble. It stands on a raised platform. At its four corners, there are four stately towers. Inside the tomb, Emperor Shah Jahan and his beloved Mumtaz Mahal lie buried side by side. This monument tells us about the expertise of the artists and craftsmen of that era. The visit to the Taj Mahal was a wonderful experience for us. It was both enjoyable and educational.

Read More: 1. A Visit to a Zoo Essay in English 2. A Journey by Train Essay 3. A Memorable Day in M y Life Essay

Related Posts

Apj abdul kalam essay in english | 100, 200, 300, 500 words, blood donation essay in english | 150, 200, 300 words, my mother essay in english 10 lines [5 sets], essay on mother teresa in english for students [300 words], 8 thoughts on “a visit to a historical place essay [100, 120, 150, 250 words]”.

Nice ! I found this website very good 👍🏻

Good I like it this is very useful for me for the holiday homework

Thanks it helps me too much for my homework

It helped me a lot for my exams

It’s really very nice. The sentences are formed beautifully. It is just like a wow. 👍🏻👍🏻

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Sign up for the HNN Newsletter

Why preserving historical places and sites matters.

Tom Mayes is the author of Why Old Places Matter: How Historic Places Affect Our Identity and Wellbeing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

Why do old places matter to people?  Why should old places matter to historians, or to the general public that historians serve? What can we learn from the continued existence of old places in our communities, and in our nation?  Why does it matter if we save these old places or if we don’t?

There are many reasons old places matter, from memory, to civic identity, to history, to architecture, to beauty, to economics.  While even the fourteen reasons I name in Why Old Places Matterdon’t fully capture all the many meanings old places have for people, for the readers of History News Network, I’d like to emphasize one main idea: old places give us an understanding of history that no other documents or evidence possibly can.  

At Civil War battlefields like Antietam, historians and visitors alike can understand how a slight rise in the lay of the land could mean victory or defeat, and how one division was lost, while another survived.  At artists’ homes and studios like Chesterwood, the home of Daniel Chester French, who sculpted the Seated Lincoln, we can understand how a certain quality of light, or a clear mountain view, or the ticking of a clock, may have inspired a painting, poem, or sculpture – and may inspire visitors today. 

At the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, we can understand something profoundly visceral about cramped, dark, and crowded lives of emigrants in New York in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  

And at dirt-floored, often roughly-built slave dwellings, we can try to glean an inkling of the reality of human bondage that we cannot understand from documents alone.  We experience old places with all of our senses, like full body immersion, and because of that, we understand different aspects of history as it was lived.

This would be enough.  But I believe that these old places play a larger role.  The continued existence of these old places may foster a deeper understanding of history that tells a more full and true story. 

Yes, these places can be manipulated to spin a particular viewpoint, like the way, for many years, the reality of slavery wasn’t acknowledged at plantation houses, or Native American perspectives weren’t expressed at frontier forts, or the way countless workers were left out of the story altogether.  One reason people weren’t acknowledged is that their places were not often recognized, valued, and retained.  These are the places that were easy to erase – to pave over with interstates, sports stadiums, and urban renewal.  Many have literally been erased from our landscape and our memory.  

It’s easier to pretend that slavery was benevolent if the reality of the poor living conditions of slave dwellings isn’t confronting visitors.  Or that labor unrest didn’t happen if the places where it happened are bulldozed.  Erasure of places can serve to hide truths that can’t be hidden if the place survives.  The recognition of sites by the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund functions as an act of social justice.  As a descendant of the Chinese American builders of an 1850’s Taoist temple in Mendocino, California said to me, the fact that the place exists – a Taoist temple from the 1850s—announces to everyone that “we were here.”

If the place survives, it can also become the vortex and venue for understanding our changing civic and national identity.  The places we choose to save-or not-reflect our identity.  That’s why we see places that are important to the “enemy” being targeted in times of conflict, such as the Mostar Bridge.  The destruction of the old place is tantamount to the destruction of the group identity.  Old places may also be targeted precisely because they tell a deeper, older, and different story, such as the Bamiyan Buddhas, which were destroyed because they represented a different religion, or the archaeological sites of Babylon or Palmyra. 

I don’t want to suggest that we can understand everything about history simply by experiencing the old places where history happened.  In fact, I’d like to emphasize a completely different point.  These old places matter not only for what they can tell us, but precisely because they raise questions.  There are often things about an old building, or a battlefield, or a working landscape that will surprise or puzzle us.  It may only be a quirky door, or the etching of initials on glass, or an unexpected rise in an otherwise flat field, or an unusual place name.  

An old place continues to carry memories of other stories that we don’t necessarily understand today, like the way the bones of our ancestors continue to surface in our cities and towns where we thought there were no people buried, or the way a Hebrew letter on an ancient column reminds us that the Jews of Rome were not always forced to live in the ghetto.  

These puzzles upend what we thought we knew and help us remember that we can never know everything about the past.  These quirks at old places jab us to be less arrogant and remind us to be humble and open as we try to understand the past and what it means for us today.   

Old places matter because they give us a deeper understanding of the past – an understanding no other documents possibly can, while reminding us to be humble about what we know.  

Top Streams

• Data Science Courses in USA
• Business Analytics Courses in USA
• Engineering Courses in USA
• Tax Courses in USA
• Healthcare Courses in USA
• Language Courses in USA
• Insurance Courses in USA
• Digital Marketing Courses in USA

Top Specialization

• Masters in Data Analytics in USA
• Masters in Mechanical Engineering in USA
• Masters in Supply Chain Management in USA
• Masters in Computer Science in USA
• MBA in Finance in USA
• Masters in Architecture in USA

Top Universities

• Cornell University
• Yale University
• Princeton University
• University of California Los Angeles
• University of Harvard
• Stanford University
• Arizona State University
• Northeastern University
• Project Management Courses in Australia
• Accounting Courses in Australia
• Medical Courses in Australia
• Psychology Courses in Australia
• Interior Designing Courses in Australia
• Pharmacy Courses in Australia
• Social Work Courses in Australia
• MBA in Australia
• Masters in Education in Australia
• Masters in Pharmacy in Australia
• Masters in Information Technology in Australia
• BBA in Australia
• Masters in Teaching in Australia
• Masters in Psychology in Australia
• University of Melbourne
• Deakin University
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Monash University
• University of Sydney
• University of Queensland
• RMIT University
• Macquarie University
• Data Science Courses in Canada
• Business Management Courses in Canada
• Supply Chain Management Courses in Canada
• Project Management Courses in Canada
• Business Analytics Courses in Canada
• Hotel Management Courses in Canada
• MBA in Canada
• MS in Canada
• Masters in Computer Science in Canada
• Masters in Management in Canada
• Masters in Psychology in Canada
• Masters in Education in Canada
• MBA in Finance in Canada
• Masters in Business Analytics in Canada
• University of Toronto
• University of British Columbia
• McGill University
• University of Alberta
• York University
• University of Calgary
• Algoma University
• University Canada West
• Project Management Courses in UK
• Data Science Courses in UK
• Public Health Courses in UK
• Digital Marketing Courses in UK
• Hotel Management Courses in UK
• Nursing Courses in UK
• Medicine Courses in UK
• Interior Designing Courses in UK
• Masters in Computer Science in UK
• Masters in Psychology in UK
• MBA in Finance in UK
• MBA in Healthcare Management in UK
• Masters in Education in UK
• Masters in Marketing in UK
• MBA in HR in UK
• University of Oxford
• University of Cambridge
• Coventry University
• University of East London
• University of Hertfordshire
• University of Birmingham
• Imperial College London
• University of Glasgow

Top Resources

• Universities in Germany
• Study in Germany
• Masters in Germany
• Courses in Germany
• Bachelors in Germany
• Germany Job Seeker Visa
• Cost of Living in Germany
• Best Universities in Germany

Top Courses

• Masters in Data Science in Germany
• MS in Computer Science in Germany
• Marine Engineering in Germany
• MS Courses in Germany
• Masters in Psychology in Germany
• Hotel Management Courses in Germany
• Masters in Economics in Germany
• Paramedical Courses in Germany
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• University of Bonn
• University of Freiburg
• University of Hamburg
• University of Stuttgart
• Saarland University
• Mannheim University
• MBA in Ireland
• Phd in Ireland
• Masters in Computer Science Ireland
• Cyber Security in Ireland
• Masters in Data Analytics Ireland
• Ms in Data Science in Ireland
• Pharmacy courses in ireland
• Business Analytics Course in Ireland
• Universities in Ireland
• Study in Ireland
• Masters in Ireland
• Courses in Ireland
• Bachelors in Ireland
• Cost of Living in Ireland
• Ireland Student Visa
• Part Time Jobs in Ireland
• Trinity College Dublin
• University College Dublin
• Dublin City University
• University of Limerick
• Dublin Business School
• Maynooth University
• University College Cork
• National College of Ireland

Colleges & Courses

• Masters in France
• Phd in France
• Study Medicine in France
• Best Universities in Frankfurt
• Best Architecture Colleges in France
• ESIGELEC France
• Study in France for Indian Students
• Intakes in France
• SOP for France Visa
• Study in France from India
• Reasons to Study in France
• How to Settle in France

More About France

• Cost of Living in France
• France Study Visa
• Cost of Living in Frankfurt
• France Scholarship for Indian Students
• Part Time Jobs in France
• Stay Back in France After Masters

About Finland

• Universities in Finland
• Study in Finland
• Courses in Finland
• Bachelor Courses in Finland
• Masters Courses in Finland
• Cost of Living in Finland
• MS in Finland
• Average Fees in Finland Universities
• PhD in Finland
• Bachelor Degree in Medicine & Surgery
• MBBS Courses in Georgia
• MBBS Courses in Russia
• Alte University
• Caucasus University
• Georgian National University SEU
• David Tvildiani Medical University
• Caspian International School Of Medicine
• Asfendiyarov Kazakh National Medical University
• Kyrgyz State Medical Academy
• Cremeia Federal University
• Bashkir State Medical University
• Kursk State Medical University
• Andijan State Medical Institute
• IELTS Syllabus
• IELTS Prepration
• IELTS Eligibility
• IELTS Test Format
• IELTS Band Descriptors
• IELTS Speaking test
• IELTS Writing Task 1
• IELTS score validity
• IELTS Cue Card

IELTS Reading Answers Sample

• Animal Camouflage
• Types Of Societies
• Australia Convict Colonies
• A Spark A Flint
• Emigration To The Us
• The History Of Salt
• Zoo Conservation Programmes
• The Robots Are Coming
• The Development Of Plastic

IELTS Speaking Cue Card Sample

• Describe A Puzzle You Have Played
• Describe A Long Walk You Ever Had
• Describe Your Favourite Movie
• Describe A Difficult Thing You did
• Describe A Businessman You Admire
• Memorable Day in My Life
• Describe Your Dream House
• Describe A Bag You Want to Own
• Describe a Famous Athlete You Know
• Aquatic Animal

IELTS Essay Sample Sample

• Best Education System
• IELTS Opinion Essay
• Agree or Disagree Essay
• Problem Solution Essays
• Essay on Space Exploration
• Essay On Historical Places
• Essay Writing Samples
• Tourism Essay
• Global Warming Essay
• GRE Exam Fees
• GRE Exam Syllabus
• GRE Exam Eligibility
• Sections in GRE Exam
• GRE Exam Benefits
• GRE Exam Results
• GRE Cutoff for US Universities
• GRE Preparation
• Send GRE scores to Universities

GRE Exam Study Material

• GRE Verbal Preparation
• GRE Study Material
• GRE AWA Essays
• GRE Sample Issue Essays
• Stanford University GRE Cutoff
• Harvard University GRE Cutoff
• GRE Quantitative Reasoning
• GRE Verbal Reasoning
• GRE Reading Comprehension
• Prepare for GRE in 2 months

Other Resources

• Documents Required For Gre Exam
• GRE Exam Duration
• GRE at Home
• GRE vs GMAT
• Improve GRE Verbal Scores

Free GRE Ebooks

• GRE Preparation Guide (Free PDF)
• GRE Syllabus (Free PDF)
• GMAT Eligibility
• GMAT Syllabus
• GMAT Exam Dates
• GMAT Registration
• GMAT Exam Fees
• GMAT Sections
• GMAT Purpose

GMAT Exam Study Material

• How to prepare for GMAT?
• GMAT Score Validity
• GMAT Preparation Books
• GMAT Preparation
• GMAT Exam Duration
• GMAT Score for Harvard
• GMAT Reading Comprehension
• GMAT Retake Strategy

Free GMAT Ebooks

• GMAT Guide PDF
• Download GMAT Syllabus PDF
• TOEFL Exam Registration
• TOEFL Exam Eligibility
• TOEFL Exam Pattern
• TOEFL Exam Preparation
• TOEFL Exam Tips
• TOEFL Exam Dates
• Documents for TOEFL Exam
• TOEFL Exam Fee

TOEFL Exam Study Material

• TOEFL Preparation Books
• TOEFL Speaking Section
• TOEFL Score and Results
• TOEFL Writing Section
• TOEFL Reading Section
• TOEFL Listening Section
• TOEFL Vocabulary
• Types of Essays in TOEFL

Free TOEFL Ebooks

• TOEFL Exam Guide (Free PDF)
• PTE Exam Dates
• PTE Exam Syllabus
• PTE Exam Eligibility Criteria
• PTE Test Centers in India
• PTE Exam Pattern
• PTE Exam Fees
• PTE Exam Duration
• PTE Exam Registration

PTE Exam Study Material

• PTE Exam Preparation
• PTE Speaking Test
• PTE Reading Test
• PTE Listening Test
• PTE Writing Test
• PTE Essay Writing
• PTE exam for Australia

Free PTE Ebooks

• PTE Syllabus (Free PDF)
• Duolingo Exam
• Duolingo Test Eligibility
• Duolingo Exam Pattern
• Duolingo Exam Fees
• Duolingo Test Validity
• Duolingo Syllabus
• Duolingo Preparation

Duolingo Exam Study Material

• Duolingo Exam Dates
• Duolingo Test Score
• Duolingo Test Results
• Duolingo Test Booking

Free Duolingo Ebooks

• Duolingo Guide (Free PDF)
• Duolingo Test Pattern (Free PDF)

NEET & MCAT Exam

• NEET Study Material
• NEET Preparation
• MCAT Eligibility
• MCAT Preparation

SAT & ACT Exam

• ACT Eligibility
• ACT Exam Dates
• SAT Syllabus
• SAT Exam Pattern
• SAT Exam Eligibility

USMLE & OET Exam

• USMLE Syllabus
• USMLE Preparation
• USMLE Step 1
• OET Syllabus
• OET Eligibility
• OET Prepration

PLAB & LSAT Exam

• PLAB Exam Syllabus
• PLAB Exam Fees
• LSAT Eligibility
• LSAT Registration
• TOEIC Result
• Study Guide

Application Process

• LOR for Masters
• SOP Samples for MS
• LOR for Phd
• SOP for Internship
• SOP for Phd
• Check Visa Status
• Motivation Letter Format
• Motivation Letter for Internship
• F1 Visa Documents Checklist

Career Prospects

• Popular Courses after Bcom in Abroad
• Part Time Jobs in Australia
• Part Time Jobs in USA
• Salary after MS in Germany
• Salary after MBA in Canada
• Average Salary in Singapore
• Higher Studies after MBA in Abroad
• Study in Canada after 12th

Trending Topics

• Best Education System in World
• Best Flying Schools in World
• Top Free Education Countries
• Best Countries to Migrate from India
• 1 Year PG Diploma Courses in Canada
• Canada Vs India
• Germany Post Study Work Visa
• Post Study Visa in USA
• Data Science Vs Data Analytics
• Public Vs Private Universities in Germany
• Universities Vs Colleges
• Difference Between GPA and CGPA
• Undergraduate Vs Graduate
• MBA in UK Vs MBA in USA
• Degree Vs Diploma in Canada
• IELTS vs TOEFL
• Duolingo English Test vs. IELTS
• Why Study in Canada
• Cost of Living in Canada
• Education System in Canada
• SOP for Canada
• Summer Intake in Canada
• Spring Intake in Canada
• Winter Intake in Canada
• Accommodation in Canada for Students
• Average Salary in Canada
• Fully Funded Scholarships in Canada
• Why Study in USA
• Cost of Studying in USA
• Spring Intake in USA
• Winter Intake in USA
• Summer Intake in USA
• STEM Courses in USA
• Scholarships for MS in USA
• Acceptable Study Gap in USA
• Interesting Facts about USA
• Free USA course
• Why Study in UK
• Cost of Living in UK
• Cost of Studying in UK
• Education System in UK
• Summer Intake in UK
• Spring Intake in UK
• Student Visa for UK
• Accommodation in UK for Students
• Scholarships in UK
• Why Study in Germany
• Cost of Studying in Germany
• Education System in Germany
• SOP for Germany
• Summer Intake in Germany
• Winter Intake in Germany
• Study Visa for Germany
• Accommodation in Germany for Students
• Free Education in Germany

Country Guides

• Study in UK
• Study in Canada
• Study in USA
• Study in Australia
• SOP Samples for Canada Student Visa
• US F1 Visa Guide for Aspirants

Exams Guides

• Duolingo Test Pattern

Recommended Reads

• Fully Funded Masters Guide
• SOP Samples For Australia
• Scholarships for Canada
• Data Science Guide
• SOP for MS in Computer Science
• Study Abroad Exams
• Alumni Connect
• Booster Program
• Scholarship

GPA CALCULATOR Convert percentage marks to GPA effortlessly with our calculator!

Expense calculator plan your study abroad expenses with our comprehensive calculator, ielts band calculator estimate your ielts band score with our accurate calculator, education loan calculator discover your eligible loan amount limit with our education calculator, university partner explore growth and opportunities with our university partnership, accommodation discover your perfect study abroad accommodation here, experience-center discover our offline centers for a personalized experience, our offices visit us for expert study abroad counseling..

• 18002102030
• Study Abroad

Essay On Historical Places: Visit to Historical Place Essay

• IELTS Preparation
• IELTS E-Books
• IELTS Registration
• IELTS Exam Fee
• IELTS Exam Dates 2024
• Documents Required
• IELTS Test Centers
• Test Format
• Band Descriptors
• IELTS Speaking Test
• General Reading Test
• General Writing Task
• IELTS Coaching
• Types of Essays
• IELTS for Australia
• IELTS Results
• Generation Gap Essay
• GPA Calculator
• Study Abroad Consultant In India
• Study Visa Consultants in India

Updated on 02 February, 2024

Mrinal Mandal

Study abroad expert.

The IELTS or International English language Testing System is a standardized test that measures the English language proficiency of non-native English speakers. The IELTS writing section has two tasks. For task 2, applicants need to write an essay on topics of general interest. An IELTS essay on historical places is an example of a common topic like history.

A question is usually given with a view or argument. Test takers need to write a formal response to the question in the format of an essay. It is important for the test takers who are preparing for an upcoming IELTS test to practice the common topics. Find below some of the samples along with the necessary tips to write an 8-band essay on historical places.

Table of Contents

Ielts essay on historical places: sample 1, download e-books for ielts preparation, essay on historical places: sample 2, important historical places chart in india, practice questions for essay on historical places, study abroad with upgrad abroad, frequently asked questions, study master programs in usa.

Question: The museums and ancient sites are visited by tourists rather than the localities. 

What are the reasons? What measures can be taken to encourage local people to visit the historical sites? 

Historical places connect us to the past. We find our roots through historical sites and museums and relate with the past cultures. Several cities and countries are known today for their historical sites, and their former glory. These entities depict the ancient way of living and the traditions practiced in the previous years. However, the historical places and museums are mainly visited by tourists from other cities and countries. They do not draw a lot of interest from local communities. Let us take a look at all the reasons why we cannot find locals visiting ancient sites near their homes.

Locals find nothing new or particularly interesting about historical sites and the artifacts present in the museums in their vicinity. They have been living around them for so long that these locations have turned into blind spots.

Sadly, we travel to witness the historic beauty of other countries and cities and show little interest in historical places around us. We often pass by the historical places and the appeal of visiting them is lost. Over that, we also spend most of our lives in that particular area and do not consider it as a source of recreation or knowledge. For us, the historical sites located in our areas are similar to regular places that we see daily. The tourists are interested to learn about the cultural heritage and historical remains of various cities and states. They take out time and arrange money to explore the ancient sites and museums. On the other hand, the locals are busy making plans to visit places in other cities and countries. The basic reason is the site that you witness every day does not attract you as much. 

On many occasions, the locals are already aware of the culture and historic significance of a place and there is nothing new to discover. They consider it to be a waste of money and time, instead, they consider traveling to a new place. After all, no one is willing to spend on the same experiences. A tourist, on the other hand, finds it interesting to explore new places, cultures, food habits, shopping destinations, and ancient museums. 

As of now, the local people hardly visit the historical sites and museums around them. However, the situation should not remain the same. The government needs to take measures to rekindle interest among the local people and urge them to visit the historic areas in their vicinity.

Firstly, the tickets for entering the historic sites for locals should either be free or minimally priced. Free tickets will attract the masses. Local people must have full means to pay for visiting a local heritage site. 

Secondly, the historical sites and museums can portray new work and amusement activities that create interest among the local people. A museum can conduct various cultural shows, interactive sessions, and exhibitions for the local people so that the bond with the local communities stays alive. If the local people are allowed to participate and display their talent and artwork in the museums, we may see a rise in the number of locals visiting these places. 

Thirdly, festivals can be held in these historical sites. People usually love to celebrate festivals within their communities. So, if festivals are celebrated in the museums and historical sites we should see the sites filled with locals enjoying their hearts out. 

That being said, if implemented well, these measures can be effective in gaining a good amount of attention from the local people. Tourists have their reasons to visit a new place but to increase the attendance of local people, the government needs to take some of these special measures. 

Important Resources to Read About IELTS:

Question: Many historical buildings and sites protected by law are part of a nation’s history. Some people think they should be knocked down and others think they should be preserved. Give your opinion. 

Sites of historical relevance are particularly important because they connect people with their roots. The ancient connections with modern civilization shine bright in many famous historical and archaeological sites all around the world – from the everlasting pyramids of Egypt to the majestic Taj Mahal in India.

The order of things has changed with urbanization and modernization. Today, many people argue that historical sites should be knocked down, reducing them to worn-out ugly buildings in front of modern infrastructure. They argue that the past is a good place to relate, but not good for development and growth. It incurs high costs for preservation and does not contribute towards development. I strongly feel that historical sites are beautiful and they must be preserved. 

Firstly, historical sites are the key remains of our ancestors. It helps modern society to learn about different faiths, cultures, developments, civilizations, and a lot more. Historical sites also promote cultural diversity and uphold the values, traditions, and culture of a particular country or city. Demolishing a piece of history to build modern infrastructure is not the value we are trying to achieve. With history being erased we will lose out on the roots to which we belong. 

Secondly, many parts of the world largely depend on the tourism industry for generating revenue and employment. The money generated by tourism accounts for more than 5% of global GDP. Historical places are among the main attractions and pull factors for tourism. How can developing countries afford to lose this source of revenue? Many states and cities completely sustain themselves based on the tourism industry. This, in turn, calls for the better preservation of our cultural heritage. 

Thirdly, a small city or country gets recognition on the global map due to its famous historical sites that attract tourists from all over the world. Historical sites have helped many hidden places gain recognition and fame.

Lastly, historical buildings are the nation’s pride. For example, the ‘Taj Mahal’ of India, and the ‘Great Wall of China’, represent the respective countries themselves. These sites have both cultural and economic value for the countries they are located in.

Summing up, I strongly believe that historical sites should be preserved. A country’s ancient architecture speaks a lot about its beautiful timeless past and glory. Historical sites bind one generation to another and they help string together memories of the past.

More Resources to Read for IELTS:

Tips to Write an IELTS Winning Essay

• The minimum word limit for the task 2 essay is 250. There is no upper word limit. 
• You have 40 minutes to complete the essay.
• Answer all parts of the questions. There can be more than one part. For example, in sample 1, there are two parts – the reasons why the local people do not visit the historic places and the measures to encourage local people to visit the historic sites.
• Use related common vocabulary – some words for an essay on ‘historical places’ are ancient, culture, historic, contemporary, famous, roots, past, values, heritage, tradition, and tourism.
• Use the relevant synonyms to write an essay after brainstorming your ideas. 
• Do not use bullet points or numbers to write advantages and disadvantages or discuss the arguments. It is recommended to write 3-4 ideas and explain them with relevant information and examples. 
• Spellings are important. Do not make spelling mistakes. Avoid using complicated and long ones to avoid mistakes. 
• Do not miss your conclusion. It is important. Take time to summarize the key information in the essay. 
• There are various kinds of essays and each of them needs to be written differently. Some of the common ones are agree-disagree, advantages-disadvantages, opinion essays, and problem-solution essays. 
• You need to give your opinion in an opinion essay and it should have relevant reasons and ideas. 
• In an ‘advantage and disadvantage’ essay, you need to focus on both advantages and disadvantages of a particular topic.
• In an ‘agree and disagree’ essay, you need to speak for both sides and mention if you ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with valid reasons.
• If you are using facts and numbers, they should match with the official sources.
• Organize your essay in short paragraphs. Do not write long paragraphs. 
• Practice the topics that are frequently used in task 2. Some of the common topics are art, crime, education, modern technology, globalization, historical places, and social problems.
• Marks in Task 2 are awarded based on lexical resources, vocabulary, grammar, and coherence. So, focus on all the aspects while writing.
• The essay should be written in a formal or semi-formal tone. Be careful with the words that you choose to express ideas and concepts. 

Do you need more help with writing a winning essay on ‘historical places’? Get in touch with the academic counselors of upGrad Abroad for additional guidance.

Recommended Reads:

Here is a chart of historical places in India that can asked in IELTS essay on visit to a historical place: 

• Taj Mahal, Agra
• Qutub Minar, Delhi
• Konark Temple, Odisha
• Sanchi Stupa, Madhya Pradesh
• Ajanta and Ellora Caves, Maharashtra
• Virupaksha Temple, Karnataka
• Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu
• Amer Fort, Rajasthan

Here are some practice questions for essay on historical places:

• Why do people like to visit historical places?
• Are all historical buildings well maintained and managed?
• Do you think the government generates funds from tourism?
• What are the effect of tourists at historical places? 
• Describe a historic place that you know about.

To help learners with end-to-end requirements of learners planning to pursue higher  education abroad , upGrad Abroad has launched a  Booster Program . This 12-week Booster Program is designed to support students in preparation for IELTS, Academic Writing, Profile Building, International Faculty Masterclass, and University Application, Education Loan, and Visa Support. Under the Booster Program, all the necessary services are required for a smoother transition from India to abroad.

Do you like to visit historical places why?

I love visiting historical places as I like to explore the history and heritage of a place. When we visit a historical monument, we can witness the past that has been left behind.

How to describe an IELTS essay on a visit to a historical place?

The tips to describe an IELTS essay on a visit to a historical place are: 

• What kind of place is it?
• How does it look?
• Where is it located?
• How is the place related to history?

What is the importance of a historical place in the future?

Historical places will always hold importance, and it saves the cultures for the future generation. Preserving a historical monument helps in restoring the past for the future.

What should be the structure of a visit to a historical place essay?

Visit to a historical place essay in IELTS should be drafted by introducing the topic and then explaining the arguments in the essay. The first paragraph should explain why tourists prefer to visit historical sites more than locals. The second paragraph presents the solutions with some examples. The conclusion then summarizes the arguments that have been presented. IELTS essay on historical places should be well-organized and written without grammatical errors.

MS in Data Analytics and Visualization in USA

Dual certification - IIITB as well as Yeshiva University. End-to-end support for applications and visa.

MS in Data Analytics in USA

Dual certification - IIITB as well as Clark University. World Class Faculty Members & Industry Experts.

MS in Information Technology in USA

GRE Waiver for IIITB learners. In-built IELTS prep to be provided by upGrad.

MS in Project Management in USA

World-Class Faculty Members & Industry Experts. One-on-One with Industry Mentors.

MS in Artificial Intelligence in USA

Save up to INR 15 Lakhs for an equivalent US Master's degree. Dual certification - IIITB as well as YeshivaUniversity.

MS in Cybersecurity in USA

GRE Waiver for IIITB learners. Dedicated Student Success Team.

Mrinal Mandal is a study abroad expert with a passion for guiding students towards their international education goals. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering, earned in 2018. Since 2021, Mrinal has been working with upGrad Abroad, where he assists aspiring students in realizing their dreams of studying abroad. With his expertise and dedication, he empowers individuals to navigate the complexities of international education, making their aspirations a reality.

Important Exams

Important resources for ielts, free study abroad counselling, trending searches, ielts sample essay, ielts reading answer.

• Capital Punishment
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Fast Food
• Modern Technology
• Government and Society
• Business and Money
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Tourism
• Easiest Way Of Communication
• Causes And Effects Of Obesity
• Nowadays the Way Many People Interact
• Prevention is Better than Cure
• Should Smoking Be Banned In Public Places
• Art is Considered an Important Part of a Society
• Art and Culture
• Individual Greed and Selfishness
• Double Question
• When a Country Develops its Technology
• Environmental Problems And Solution
• Describe A Dinner You Really Enjoyed
• Describe A Time When You Helped A Friend
• Describe an Art Exhibition that You Visited
• Talk About A Time When You Gave Advice to Someone
• Describe A Street Market In Your City
• Describe A Time When You Felt Bored
• Describe a Film that Made You Laugh
• Describe an Expensive Activity that You Enjoy Doing Occasionally
• Describe A Person Who Wears Unusual Clothes
• Describe A Time When Your Computer Broke Down
• Describe an Occasion When Many People Were Smiling
• Describe A Live Sports Match That You Watched
• Describe A Time When You First Talked in A Foreign Language
• Describe a Famous Person You Are Interested In
• Describe an Event You Attended in Which You Didn�t Like the Music Played
• Describe a Time When You Told Your Friend an Important Truth
• Describe a Person Who Impressed You in Primary School
• Describe a Difficult Decision that You Once Made
• Crop Growing Skyscrapers
• Green Wave Washes Over Mainstream Shopping
• Eco Tourism
• Mental Gymnastics
• An Introduction To Film Sound
• The Meaning And Power Of Smell
• The Story Of Silk
• The Birth Of Scientific English
• Collecting As A Hobby
• Moles Happy As Homes Go Underground
• The History Of Glass
• This Marvelous Invention
• The Benefits Of Being Bilingual
• The Development Of Museums
• The Psychology Of Innovation
• Biological Control Of Pests
• Reducing The Effects Of Climate Change
• IELTS Validity
• IELTS Full Form
• CEFR level IELTS
• IELTS score chart
• Australia Band Requirements
• IELTS Preparation Books
• IELTS Certificate

The above tips are the Author's experiences. upGrad does not guarantee scores or admissions.

Call us to clear your doubts at:

Download our App

• Grievance Redressal
• Experience Centers
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• University Partner
• Accommodation
• IELTS Band Calculator
• Download Study Abroad App
• Education Loan Calculator
• upGrad Abroad Office
• Expense Calculator
• Knowledge Base
• Business Partner

Top Destinations

Masters programs.

• MBA in Germany, IU
• MIM in Germany, IU
• MS in CS in Germany, IU
• MS in Data Analytics in USA, Clark University
• MS in Project Management in USA, Clark University
• MS in IT in USA, Clark University
• MS in Data Analytics & Visualization in USA, Yeshiva University
• MS in Artificial Intelligence in USA, Yeshiva University
• MS in Cybersecurity, Yeshiva University

Study Abroad Important Blogs

• Cost of Study:
• Cost of Studying in Canada
• Cost of Studying in Ireland
• Cost of Studying in Australia
• Cost of living:
• Cost of living in UK
• Cost of living in Australia
• Cost of living in Germany
• Cost of living in Ireland
• Cost of living in Canada
• Career Opportunities:
• Career Opportunities in Australia
• Career Opportunities in Germany
• Job Opportunities in After MS in Canada
• Job Opportunities After MBA in Australia
• Job Opportunities After MS in UK
• IELTS Exam Resources:
• Academic IELTS
• IELTS Band Score
• IELTS Writing Task 2
• IELTS Slot Booking
• IELTS Band Score Chart
• IELTS Score for UK
• IELTS Score for USA
• Validity of IELTS Score
• IELTS Speaking Topics
• IELTS Reading Tips
• How to Prepare for IELTS at Home Without Coaching
• Types of IELTS Exam
• IELTS Academic vs General
• IELTS Exam Pattern
• IELTS Essay
• IELTS Exam Dates
• Top Streams:
• Fashion Designing Courses in Australia
• Accounting Courses in Canada
• Management Courses in Canada

Essay on Historical Monuments: Explore the Importance of Historical Monuments

Table of Contents

Essay on Historical Monuments under 150 Words

Essay on historical monuments under 100 words, essay on historical monuments in delhi under 350 words, short essay on historical monuments in india, essay on historical monuments: taj mahal, essay on historical monuments near uttar pradesh, essay on historical monuments in delhi, essay on historical monuments faqs.

Essay on Historical Monuments: Historical monuments are significant landmarks that represent the past and reflect the cultural, social, and economic aspects of a particular era. They are a source of inspiration and knowledge for the present and future generations, and they are essential in preserving the cultural heritage of a region or a country. India, being a culturally diverse country, is home to a wide range of historical monuments that are spread across the country, each with its own unique architecture, design, and historical significance.

In this article, you will learn how to write essay on historical monuments in different word range.

Essay on Historical Monuments in 350 words

In India, historical monuments can be traced back to ancient times, where kings, emperors, and rulers built them to showcase their power and wealth. These monuments were built using various techniques and styles, such as Mughal, Rajput, Buddhist, and Jain, to name a few. Some of the most popular and well-known historical monuments in India include the Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar, Red Fort, and many more.

The Taj Mahal, located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, is one of the most popular and recognizable historical monuments in the world. It was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. The Taj Mahal is known for its white marble architecture and intricate carvings, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a symbol of love and devotion, and it attracts millions of tourists from all over the world every year.

In addition to the Taj Mahal, there are several other historical monuments near Uttar Pradesh that are equally significant. For example, Jhansi Fort, located in the city of Jhansi, is a popular tourist destination and is known for its association with Rani Laxmi Bai, a warrior queen who fought against the British. Other popular historical monuments near Uttar Pradesh include Fatehpur Sikri, Khajuraho, and Sanchi Stupa, to name a few.

Delhi, the capital of India, is home to several historical monuments, each with its own unique history and significance. These monuments include the Red Fort, Jama Masjid, India Gate, and Humayun’s Tomb, among others. The Red Fort, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is known for its stunning architecture and design. India Gate, on the other hand, is a war memorial that pays tribute to the Indian soldiers who died in World War I.

In conclusion, historical monuments play a crucial role in preserving the cultural heritage of a region or a country. They are a source of inspiration and knowledge for the present and future generations, and they help us understand our past and the people who lived before us. It is important that we protect and preserve these monuments for future generations to come so that they can learn from them and appreciate their cultural significance.

Historical monuments are not just structures, but they are an integral part of our collective heritage. They represent our past and offer valuable insights into our history and culture. The importance of preserving these monuments cannot be overstated. These structures need to be protected and maintained so that future generations can continue to appreciate and learn from them.

India is home to several historical monuments that are a testament to the country’s rich cultural heritage. Monuments like the Taj Mahal, the Jhansi Fort, and the Red Fort are significant tourist attractions that bring millions of visitors to India every year. The government and the public should work together to preserve these historical monuments so that they can continue to inspire and educate future generations.

Historical monuments are an integral part of India’s heritage and culture. They not only serve as a testament to the country’s rich history but also attract tourists from all over the world. Delhi, being the capital of India, is home to several historical monuments that reflect the city’s glorious past. The Red Fort, Qutub Minar, Humayun’s Tomb, and Jama Masjid are some of the famous historical monuments in Delhi that are a must-visit for tourists who want to experience the rich history and culture of India.

Delhi, the capital of India, is a city rich in history and culture. The city is home to several historical monuments that reflect the glorious past of India. These monuments are not just architectural marvels, but they also hold great significance in the Indian history and culture. In this essay, we will explore some of the famous historical monuments in Delhi.

Red Fort: The Red Fort, also known as the Lal Qila, is one of the most famous historical monuments in Delhi. Built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the 17th century, the Red Fort is made of red sandstone and is a fine example of Mughal architecture. The fort is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and attracts tourists from all over the world.

Qutub Minar: The Qutub Minar is a 73-meter-high minaret that was built in the 12th century by Qutb-ud-din Aibak. The minaret is made of red sandstone and marble and is considered to be one of the finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture. The Qutub Minar is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is visited by millions of tourists every year.

Humayun’s Tomb: Humayun’s Tomb is a magnificent mausoleum built in the 16th century for the Mughal emperor Humayun. The tomb is made of red sandstone and white marble and is considered to be the first garden-tomb in India. The tomb is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is known for its beautiful architecture and lush gardens.

Jama Masjid: The Jama Masjid is one of the largest mosques in India and was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the 17th century. The mosque is made of red sandstone and white marble and can accommodate over 25,000 worshippers at a time. The Jama Masjid is a must-visit for tourists who want to experience the rich Islamic culture of India.

Apart from these monuments, Delhi is also home to other historical landmarks such as India Gate, Lotus Temple, and the Akshardham Temple. These monuments not only reflect the architectural and cultural richness of India but also serve as a reminder of the country’s glorious past.

India is home to some of the world’s most magnificent and historically significant monuments. Indian historical monuments are a testament to the country’s rich cultural and architectural heritage. These monuments have stood the test of time and have become an integral part of India’s identity.

The importance of Indian historical monuments cannot be overstated. They not only serve as reminders of India’s glorious past but also attract millions of tourists every year. The tourism industry has become a significant contributor to India’s economy, and historical monuments play a crucial role in this.

The history of historical monuments in India dates back to ancient times. India has been home to several empires and civilizations, each leaving behind their unique mark on the country’s landscape. The monuments from different eras and cultures offer a glimpse into India’s diverse and rich past.

Also read, Invest in our Planet Essay .

The Taj Mahal is undoubtedly one of the most iconic historical monuments in India. Located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, the Taj Mahal was built by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. The monument is a masterpiece of Mughal architecture and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Taj Mahal is not just a symbol of love but also represents the pinnacle of Mughal architecture. The monument is a fusion of Indian, Persian, and Islamic architectural styles, making it a unique structure. The Taj Mahal is made of white marble and is adorned with intricate carvings and inlays of precious stones.

The significance of the Taj Mahal goes beyond its architectural and design features. The monument is a symbol of India’s rich cultural heritage and attracts millions of tourists every year. The Taj Mahal is a testament to the enduring power of love and serves as a reminder of the importance of preserving our historical monuments.

Uttar Pradesh is home to several historical monuments that are worth visiting. One such monument is the Jhansi Fort, which played a crucial role in India’s struggle for independence. The fort is located in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh and is a significant tourist attraction.

The Jhansi Fort is an excellent example of medieval Indian architecture. The fort’s design is a blend of Rajput and Mughal architectural styles, making it a unique structure. The fort’s history is closely linked to the legendary Rani Lakshmibai, who fought against the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Another historical monument near Uttar Pradesh is the Khajuraho Group of Monuments. Located in Madhya Pradesh, these monuments are famous for their erotic sculptures and intricate carvings. The Khajuraho Group of Monuments is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and attracts tourists from all over the world.

Historical monuments are structures or sites that have significant historical, cultural, or architectural value. These monuments are often symbols of the past, representing a particular era or civilization. They serve as a reminder of our ancestors and their achievements, and their preservation is crucial for future generations to understand and appreciate our collective history. This essay aims to explore the importance of historical monuments, with a specific focus on Indian monuments such as the Taj Mahal, as well as monuments near Uttar Pradesh and in Delhi.

• IELTS Scores
• Life Skills Test
• Find a Test Centre
• Alternatives to IELTS
• General Training
• Academic Word List
• Topic Vocabulary
• Collocation
• Phrasal Verbs
• Writing eBooks
• Reading eBook
• All eBooks & Courses

Preservation of Historic Buildings Essays

by Charlene (Hong Kong)

Should we look after old buildings?

Click here to add your own comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to IELTS Essay Feedback Forum .

Protecting Old Buildings

by Deepika (Delhi, India)

Kindly analyze my essay written below and let me know what is the possible score I may get in writing section: Many old buildings protected by law are part of a nation’s history. Some people think they should be knocked down and replaced by new ones. How important is it to maintain old buildings? Should history stand in the way of progress? History plays an important role in getting a better knowledge about any country’s culture, traditions, beliefs, religions etc. Without history one would have no idea about his origin and the struggle done by the freedom fighters and various other people for freedom and other human rights. There are various old buildings in almost every part of the world which represents history of that region. But there are some people who think that these buildings should be knocked down and replaced by new ones. Here the discussion will be about the importance of such buildings. Old buildings are helpful in identifying the background of a country. Infrastructure of such buildings shows the creativity and talent of the labour class people during that time and even helps to know about the lifestyle of the people in that era. There are other benefits of maintaining such buildings i.e. ancient buildings attract tourism from and across the world. Tourism is an important measure in economical growth of a country. Old and rough structure of these buildings could be the main concern of the beings who want them to be knocked out. In order to pay attention towards their concerns, government should provide proper funding to the maintenance department for renovation of the old structure. I agree that history should not stand in the way of progress. History is all about the past so in case if it restricts the progress path in the present or future then government should not let it be a problem. Government should support the idea of progress anyhow and if that requires old buildings to be knocked out then that should be done positively. *** You can comment below on this Essay on Protecting Old Buildings.

Preserving of Old Buildings

by Mubashir

Friends, grading required for this essay. Many old buildings protected by law are part of a nation’s history. Some people think they should be knocked down and replaced by news ones. How important is it to maintain old buildings? Should history stand in the way of progress? Nowadays, due to massive construction work availability of space is the serious problem that needs to be addressed. The building constructed decades back are being removed and demolished for the sake of erecting new structures. However, I tend to believe that ancient buildings are part of nation’s history and they represent the attraction of modern cities therefore, they should not be demolished. The historic buildings should be preserved, protected and renovated for future generations to come. Firstly, the buildings that were constructed in the previous era represent the history of the nation. For instance, it will inform how used people used to live previously. The concept, design, architecture and techniques of construction when there were not enough facilities and options as we have now in the 21st century. This example depicts clearly that building of the last century signified the history of country. Thus it can be seen that preserving the history in the form of old architectural building will be an asset for upcoming generation reminding them about the life of their ancestors rather than constructing the modern style of building. Secondly, the old aged construction is actually the charm and magnetic attraction for the local residents. For instance, when they will be passing by the all the new buildings and all of a sudden they stare an old building their eyes will be glued to the old construction and they will not even bother to see the new building again because these building have now become unique and rare. This example supports the point that old construction appeases the local people. Therefore, it can be seen that old style of building seen to catch people eyes more than the newly designed and constructed buildings. Further, I reckon that history is not hindering the nation’s development or progress rather it is teaching a lesson and motivation for the people. For instance, the people can learn from the mistakes, problems, issues, difficulties which will move them a step forward and they won’t repeat those errors in future. To conclude, the historic buildings are a part of nation’s history and local people sightseeing. I firmly believe that newly constructed building should not be constructed at the cost of erasing old building. I suppose that old buildings will always be sacred for the every nation in the times to come also. *** Help the students in the IELTS test by commenting below on their Preserving Old Buildings Essay.

Click here to post comments

Essay on Protecting Old Buildings

Last month I sat for ielts exam and got overall 7, but in writing I got 5.5. I need at least 6. Will you evaluate my writing on these following essay. My next exam date is 30th march. Many old buildings protected by law are part of a nation’s history. Some people think they should be knocked down and replaced by new ones. How important is it to maintain old buildings? Should history stand in the way of progress? Almost every nation has its own historical places, buildings and cultural heritage, those are assets of a nation and authorities are liable to protect and take care of them. However, some of us claimed that those buildings are valueless and need to replace with new one to progress. But, to me the law provided by for the protection of nation's history is rational due to following reasons. First of all, those old architecture tells about a countries efforts how they change situations for better, also about the heroic people who did good to provide facilities for better generation. For instance, The great wall of china is representing the dedication of the king and effort of the people to protect nations from other. The Tajmahal was built by king Shahjahan to express his love for her wife. Those building are the wonders now as they are acting as inspiration for us, so it is totally meaningless not to protect them. Secondly, historical places are main tourist attraction of a country. Not only it represents ones culture and art but also sets a good tourist business. Millions of money are being added to countries economy for those historical monuments. So destroying them is a way of big economic loss. Finally, a historical building is a great object for architectural historian. Many lost civilization has come in front of us with all those buildings, also act as a source of information for research work. There are many buildings in the world which is a wonder of engineering work that acts as inspiration for modern engineer. Therefore, replacing all old one with new buildings is just a big loss for whole nations both culturally and economically. And most importantly those monuments are taking a small place of a county. If anyone wants to build new buildings that can be done in another places without destroying those valuable work. Those history inspired us and lead us develop for far better way. With the economy that earned from tourist is helping countries to progress. Thus, history working silently to forward us. To sum up, a historical architecture is a master piece of nations as well as a valuable asset. Government should be more dedicated and careful to beautify and protect them.

Maintaining Old Buildings

by karishma (India)

Many old buildings protected by law are part of a nation’s history. Some people think they should be knocked down and replaced by new ones. How important is it to maintain old buildings? Should history stand in the way of progress? Countries all over the world have antique buildings.It depicts the culture and heritage of the nation. Few people are of the view that these buildings should be demolished and its space should be used for educational institutes for the development of the nation. The historical building gives an insight about our civilization. For example the Indus Valley civilization explains the manner in which small towns started developing. The palaces takes us back in time showing the monarchy system of functioning. Moreover it projects the importance of education during the mediual times. For example the takshashila University in India. It brings to our knowledge that the origin of all languages is Sanskruit. These historical sights are also very beneficial for the archaeological surveys. The Dhola Vira is an perfect example for rain water harvesting. The prehistoric constructions also helps in increasing the national income of the nation by attracting tourists. People from all over the world comes to visit the Taj Mahal. It show the immense love of Shah Jahan for his wife wife Mumtaz Mahal. The culture and the tradition provides and identification to the nation. It is passed from generation to generation. History does not stand in the progress of the nation as it depicts what we had in the past and few of them are worth preserving. To conclude the prehistoric building should be funded by the government to preserve our cultural heritage as it is the base of our origin. These buildings do not hinder the progress of the nation.

Before you go...

Check out the ielts buddy band 7+ ebooks & courses.

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

• Click on the HTML link code below.
• Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.

Band 7+ eBooks

"I think these eBooks are FANTASTIC!!! I know that's not academic language, but it's the truth!"

Linda, from Italy, Scored Band 7.5

IELTS Modules:

Other resources:.

• All Lessons
• Band Score Calculator
• Writing Feedback
• Speaking Feedback
• Teacher Resources
• Free Downloads
• Recent Essay Exam Questions
• Books for IELTS Prep
• Useful Links

Recent Articles

Useful Language for IELTS Graphs

May 16, 24 04:44 AM

Taking a Gap Year

May 14, 24 03:00 PM

IELTS Essay: Loving Wildlife and Nature

May 10, 24 02:36 AM

Important pages

IELTS Writing IELTS Speaking IELTS Listening   IELTS Reading All Lessons Vocabulary Academic Task 1 Academic Task 2 Practice Tests

Connect with us

Copyright © 2022- IELTSbuddy All Rights Reserved

IELTS is a registered trademark of University of Cambridge, the British Council, and IDP Education Australia. This site and its owners are not affiliated, approved or endorsed by the University of Cambridge ESOL, the British Council, and IDP Education Australia.