Back to life Chettinad's mansions find new purpose

Homes in a once-thriving hub of traders in southern India are being restored to their former grandeur as hotels

- Sneha Thomas

The single-stone granite pillars and Burmese teak beams of Chettinad's heritage hotels are adorned with strands of marigolds, while the verandas and corridors are hung with small, handmade palm-leaf parrots that sway gracefully among fragrant blooms. Six-metrelong banners made of Chettinad cotton saris proclaim "The Chettinad Heritage and Cultural festival".

Built by the Chettiar merchant community, which from the middle of the 19th century to the 1950s spread across the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, it's hard to believe these grand mansions were ever neglected.

"Economically, there was no growth in Chettinad for half a century. So how do we save such heritage?" asked Yacob Thomas George, the festival's coordinator and manager of the Bangala hotel. "The only way is tourism.

I was inspired by the Kochi-Muziris Biennale [India's largest art exhibition] and thought a cultural festival could do for Chettinad what it did for Kochi." The annual four-day festival, held every September for the past three years, generates about 2m rupees ($23,000) a day for the local economy and has seen the number of trained local guides triple to 12. Two historic mansions Palaniappa Vilas and Lakshmi Vilas - have been restored.

Another has opened its doors to visitors, while some have been converted into hotels. Domestic tourism has grown by 8%, according to the festival organisers, boosting trade for local artisans, including Chettinad sari weavers and Athangudi tile makers.

According to legend, the Chettiars were driven from coastal areas many centuries ago to an inland region several hundred kilometres from Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu.

The new land with its thorny scrub and blistering heat was ill-suited for agriculture so they turned to trade.