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Sat 05 May 2007Pallid portrait of a treasured tombArchitectureThe Taj Mahal was a photo-opportunity even before cameras were invented. The image of the white marble mausoleum in Agra, northern India, has in the last few hundred years become to that country what the Pyramids have been for thousands of years to Egypt.When it came to a good photo-opportunity, the late Diana, Princess of Wales had come to understand the power of a potent, symbolic backdrop. There she was in 1992, on the front page of countless magazines and newspapers, legs placed demurely sideways, eyes cast down, on a bench slap-bang in front of a 350-year old tribute to a royal wife. The mausoleum had been built as an expression of Moghul emperor Shah Jahan's love for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Diana's royal husband was infamously notable for his absence in those pictures. As Diana would so soon tell Martin Bashir on Panorama, "There were three of us in the marriage". As it happens, there were four "of us" in Shah Jahan's marriage, since he had three wives. But unlike the ill-fated Diana, Mumtaz Mahal proved to be the favourite in that crowded alliance.