Jantar Mantar, (Varanasi)

The Jantar Mantar of Varanasi holds a heavy stone staircase that climbs toward the sky, leading to nowhere. Built by Maharaja Jai Singh the second in the early eighteenth century, this observatory is one of five he constructed across India to track the heavens. While his astronomers measured the stars to refine the calendar and predict eclipses, they faced a constant struggle with the rising city smog. The giant bronze instruments here were designed to hold their precision against the shifting light of the Ganges.