Taj Mahal Secret #2: The Towers Would Collapse Outward
The Taj Mahal is flanked at its four corners with tall minarets. These minarets reflect the Mughal Muslim tradition yet could be a real problem if India’s tectonic plates act up. Designers made the minarets lean slightly away from the building, so they would fall into the garden during an earthquake, not onto the building. In addition to protecting the building, the leaning minarets are an optical illusion.
By leaning them outward, people looking at them from the ground see them as straight up and down. This is a trick of the eye; if they actually were straight up and down, the eye curves it, This is the same thing that happened with the Parthenon’s columns. So the minarets at the Taj Mahal accommodate this trick of the eye and tries to save it from earthquake. The designers had a lot of foresight!
