Palatial Jaipur, India

Royal palaces galore accent this pink city

By Adam Roy

It's late afternoon and Ajmeri Gate is abuzz with activity. Beneath the monolithic arches, throngs of pedestrians flow back and forth between the old city and the sprawling web of modern Jaipur. The hum of the crowd hangs over this corner of the city, punctuated here and there by the tap-tap-tap of two-stroke engines as herds of auto-rickshaws sputter through, swerving their way around cyclists and the occasional bony-haunched cow.

By the side of the road, vendors hawk produce from roughly-hewn wooden carts or fry morsels of dough in cast-iron cauldrons. Families, balanced precariously on scooters, zip past, the women's saris blurs of color against the dusty coral-pink walls.

Jaipur is something of an anomaly among Indian cities. In a country where some cities can trace their roots back for well over a millennium, Jaipur is less than 300 years old, yet boasts a rich history as a seat of royal power. It was one of the few planned cities of its time, yet its gridded streets and zoning still draws praise from urban planners today. It's a city where, put simply, the past is tangled up in the present, the present is tangled up in the past, and the future is wrapped up somewhere in the middle.

Jaipur's story begins in Amber, a hilltop fort just northeast of the old city. The fort as we know it now took shape around the turn of the 17th century, when the ruling Kachwaha family, predecessors of the current Maharajas of Jaipur, began construction on a royal residence in their longtime capital of Amber.

The resulting structure was, by all accounts, magnificent, a rich hybrid of Muslim and Hindu architecture that would serve as the clan's seat of power for over a century. While it's currently undergoing restoration, Amber continues to attract visitors, who come to see the palace's ornate artwork or catch the panoramic view of the surrounding lowlands from Amber's cliffside terraces.

In 1727, Jai Singh II began construction on Jaipur, planning it as a new capital to replace his family's longtime residence at Amber. Unlike most cities of the time, Jaipur was constructed as a planned community, with its streets laid out in a carefully designed grid according to Vedic architectural principles. The finishing touch, however, didn't come until 1853, when, according to legend, Maharaja Man Singh II gave the city its now-iconic pink paint job to celebrate a visit from the Prince of Wales.

While modern Jaipur is a working city, a significant chunk of the economy consists of catering to visitors drawn in by the city's cultural and architectural riches. If you're a history buff set on exploring every nook and cranny of Jaipur's royal history, the best advice I can offer you is this: give up. Jaipur may be one of the few cities on earth that could legitimately claim a surplus of palaces. Picking just a few to tackle at a time will make your trip infinitely more pleasant.

The City Palace complex is a good place to start. The word "palace" doesn't really do justice to this conglomeration of royal apartments and labyrinthine galleries, the private inner section of which still houses the royal family. In addition to several city blocks of stunning stonework and engraving, the palace's museum houses a staggering collection of artwork as well as some of the more impressive specimens from the royal armory.

At the edge of the complex is the well-known "Palace of the Winds", or Hawa Mahal, a facade constructed to allow the cloistered ladies of the royal family to catch an occasional glimpse of the street life below while still remaining unseen. Like them, visitors have the sobering opportunity to spend a few minutes watching life unfold through the stone latticework that was many women's only connection to the outside world.

A stop at nearby Jantar Mantar, a royal observatory that dates back to the construction of Jaipur, is a surreal bookend to a day of touring the City Palace. Built in the days before telescopes, the oversized geometric structures of Jantar Mantar are as impressive in form as they are in function, 20 meter-high sundials and bowl-shaped marble star charts that once served as the tools of royal astrologers.

Today, the observatory and its collection of astronomical arcana sit in the shadow of several neighboring high rises, a juxtaposition that would be odd in most cities but seems oddly appropriate for Jaipur; while Jantar Mantar no longer reads the stars, it may have a better view of its city's future than ever before.