City Palace, Udaipur

Seen from the water of Lake Pichola, the City Palace of Udaipur is a single cliff of cream-coloured towers, balconies and cupolas running along the eastern shore — a façade some 244 metres long and about 30 metres high, set on a ridge so that the buildings seem to grow out of the rock. It is the largest palace complex in Rajasthan and the clearest portrait of the house of Mewar, whose Sisodia rulers built and rebuilt it for roughly four hundred years.

The story begins in 1559, when Maharana Udai Singh II chose this lakeside ridge for a new capital after leaving the old hill fortress of Chittorgarh. Udaipur, the city that grew around his palace, became the seat of Mewar, and some twenty-two generations of his successors added their own courts and wings. The result is not one design but a chain of palaces linked by narrow stairs and corridors, in a blend of Rajput and Mughal forms — cusped arches, jharokha balconies, small domed pavilions — built in granite and marble and finished inside with mirror-work, inlay, silver and paintings.

The rooms are where the palace becomes intimate. The Mor Chowk, the Peacock Courtyard, is famous for its three peacocks in glass mosaic, set in alcoves and said to stand for three seasons, made of some five thousand pieces of coloured glass that flash blue and green as the light changes. The Sheesh Mahal is a chamber lined with mirrors; the Manak Mahal, a formal audience hall, has an alcove of mirrored glass. At the heart of the complex the Badi Mahal stands on a natural outcrop of rock some 27 metres high, so that its garden court — trees, a pool, arched pavilions — hangs at the level of upper floors elsewhere. The women's quarters, the Zenana Mahal, became part of the museum in 1974; in the Fateh Prakash Palace a collection of crystal furniture and objects ordered from England in 1877 is displayed — much of it famously never unpacked in the lifetime of the ruler who bought it.

Today the complex is shared between a museum run by the Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation and heritage hotels operated by the former ruling family's company. Climb to the upper terraces for the view: below, the lake with its island palaces, and around it the whitewashed city and the hills of the Aravalli range.

Getting there

The palace stands in the centre of Udaipur, about 3 km from the heart of the city, on the east bank of Lake Pichola, and is easily reached by auto-rickshaw or on foot from the old town. Maharana Pratap Airport (UDR) is about 22 km away.