A Royal Tour

When experiencing the famous Golden Triangle (Delhi-Agra-Jaipur) circuit in India, make sure to squeeze out ample time for The City Palace, Jaipur. The Royal Grandeur walk at the palace is your best bet to savour the absolute splendour of history, heritage, and culture that the princely state of Rajasthan has to offer.

- Sushmita Srivastav

OWNING A KEEN eye for unique architecture and intricacy, a Maharaja once arrived at a land in northwest India, dreaming of building a planned city that could be reminisced forever for its aesthetics and grandeur. This was some 300 years ago. What followed were years of constructing a city with a gridlike urban layout, royal palaces and forts, ancient temples, workshops for artisans, and sprawling marketplaces that have everything from age-old murals to precious gemstones on offer. Jaipur, today, stands as a sea of mighty palaces and hoary sandstone buildings brushed in salmon pink, and fresh mid-rise towers, quirky cafes, and urbanisation muscling in— colourful and chaotic at once—the Pink City has a heady brew of the old and the new flowing through its labyrinthine lanes.

And right in the heart of this beautiful mess of a city, the City Palace rises like a dreamland marinated in the magnificence of a proud past. It was in 1727 when Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II thought of making a city around a colossal citadel that not only played the grand residence for royalties of Jaipur, but was also a centre of patronage for arts, learning, festivities, and religious faith. Intricate walls were raised, best of architects proficient in Rajput, Mughal and European architecture and design got to work, and the king’s successors continued to bedeck the exquisite City Palace up until the 20th century.