The most haunting of Bijapur's monuments — the unfinished tomb of Ali Adil Shah II. Twelve enormous arches stand around a black stone platform with the cenotaphs of the sultan, his queens, and his children. There is no dome. The arches were meant to support one twice the size of the Gol Gumbaz, but the sultan was assassinated before work could begin and the project was abandoned.
Open to the sky, hung with bats at dusk, the place has a melancholy that the finished monuments lack. Walk in slowly, look up at the rough-hewn tops of the arches, and you see what might have been the largest dome in India. Free to enter; quietest in the late afternoon.