Mysore Palace
Interesting facts
- With more than four million visitors a year, Mysore Palace ranks among the most visited monuments in India.
- The golden howdah weighs about 750 kilograms and carries the image of the goddess Chamundeshwari through the city in the Dasara procession.
- On 30 June 1799, after the fall of Tipu Sultan, the five-year-old Krishnaraja Wadiyar III was crowned in the Lakshmiramana temple within the palace walls.
- By 1868 around 10,000 people, roughly one in six inhabitants of Mysore, worked for the palace household.
- Records place a mud-walled fort on this site as early as 1399, centuries before the present palace.
- The five-storey central tower rises to about 44 metres, crowned by its gilded onion dome.
- A traveller in 1908 described hundreds of carvers and thousands of masons at work on the new palace.
- The palace armoury displays about 725 weapons, from swords and firearms to helmets and shields.
- The main wrought-iron entrance is called Ane Bagilu, Kannada for "elephant gate".
- The Prasannakrishna temple in the grounds was built in 1829 and is painted with murals from the Bhagavata Purana.
Why it is worth it
Mysore Palace was the seat of the Wadiyar dynasty, rulers of Mysore, and it is one of the most lavish royal buildings of late colonial India. The palace that stands today is a replacement: on 20 February 1897, during wedding festivities, fire swept through the old wooden palace and destroyed its northern part, including the durbar hall, armoury and library. The British architect Henry Irwin was commissioned to design a new one, and building ran from 1897 to 1912 at a cost far beyond the original estimate.
Irwin's palace is a showpiece of the Indo-Saracenic style, mixing Hindu, Islamic, Rajput and Gothic elements in grey granite, with deep pink marble domes on its corner towers and a five-storey central tower capped by a gilded dome. The interiors are richer still. The Durbar Hall, the public audience hall, is a long colonnade of carved granite pillars with paintings of Hindu deities, and the octagonal marriage pavilion, the Kalyana Mantapa, is roofed with a stained-glass dome in peacock patterns, carried on cast-iron columns made in Scotland. The golden throne and the golden howdah, carried in procession during the festival, are among the palace's treasures.
The palace comes fully alive during Mysore Dasara, the autumn festival of nine nights, when the whole façade is outlined with some hundred thousand light bulbs and the procession leaves from its gates; the lights are also switched on on Sundays and public holidays. Within the walls stand several Hindu temples, from the Lakshmiramana temple, whose inscription dates to 1499, to twentieth-century shrines, and the upper floor remains the residence of the head of the Wadiyar family.
Getting there
The palace stands in the centre of Mysuru, about 2 km from Mysuru railway station. Mysore Airport (MYQ) is about 8 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
Mysore Palace, also known as Amba Vilas Palace, is a historic palace and royal residence located in Mysore, Karnataka, India. It served as the official residence of the Wadiyar dynasty and the seat of the Kingdom of Mysore, and was commissioned by Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV in August 1897 following the destruction of the previous structure in a fire. The design of the palace is attributed to Henry Irwin, a British architect who had earlier designed the Madras High Court, and Edwin Wolleston Fritchley, who would later design the Lalitha Mahal. Construction of the current structure began in 1897 and was completed in 1912. It is the largest of the seven palaces in the city of Mysore and is a prominent example of Indo-Saracenic architecture, combining Indo-Islamic, Rajput, Hoysala and Gothic architectural styles.
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