An elegy in marble!
The Taj Mahal, one of the world's most beautiful buildings, was scheduled to be torn down in the 1830s so that its marble facing could be removed and shipped to London for sale by auction to the landed English gentry. Wrecking machinery was moved into the garden grounds and work about to begin when word came from London not to proceed. The first auction of marble facades of Indian monuments and edifices had been a failure, and it would not be worth it to tear down the two-hundred-year-old mausoleum.
