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Mud-pack for the Taj Mahal

Summary

9 June 2014

The Taj Mahal, India's most famous monument, is to be given a mud-pack treatment to clean its white marble walls of yellow stains caused by pollution. It'll be the fourth time this method has been used to clean the seventeenth-century tomb. 

Reporter:

Joanna Jolly

Report

The white marble domes¹ and minarets² of the Taj Mahal were constructed as a monument to love by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan on the death of his favourite wife, nearly four hundred years ago. 

In recent years, pollution from factories and a nearby oil refinery³ have turned its pristine⁴ walls yellow. The Archaeological Survey of India began applying mud-packs to clean the monument in the mid-1990s. 

It says continuing high levels of pollution means the treatment needs to be applied⁵ again soon. The lime-rich clay mask is believed to be based on a recipe used by Indian women to restore the natural glow to their faces. 

A thin layer of mud is painted on the marble and left overnight before being brushed off in the morning. The surfaces are then washed down with distilled⁶ water to remove polluting chemicals drawn⁷ from the stone and the dirt and grease left behind by millions of visitors.