The beautiful “Pink City” of Jaipur was the first planned city in India. It was established in 1727 - making it relatively young when compared to Old Delhi and Agra – when the Mughal empire was already in decline.
Jai Singh II was the ruler of the Kingdom of Amber that was set in the mountains, north of Jaipur. Water scarcity and ongoing drought forced Jai Singh to look for an alternative location and settled on the plains at the base of the mountains. A keen mathematician, scientist and astronomer, Jai Singh studied Europe’s cities and their street plans. He then hired a renowned Bengali architect and together they went about building the old city of Jaipur. He fortified Jaipur with a wall and in 2019, UNESCO added the entire city on its World Heritage list.
Most of the structures were built with white limestone and red brick powder, giving them a pinkish shade. However, when Prince Albert was visiting in 1876, to welcome him, Jai Singh arranged to have all the buildings painted in various shades of pink. It is believed that the colour pink is meant to symbolise hospitality. The tradition of keeping buildings pink continues to this day.
Within its fortified walls, Jaipur has a collection of delightful monuments and splendid architectural styles. Here is a roundup of the most important ones.
• Jal Mahal Palace – is a fantastic late 18th century palace in the middle of a lake. It is a blend of Rajput and Mughal architecture in red sandstone that was once used as a hunting lodge. It looks like a one-storey floating palace but it is actually five storeys high with four of them submerged beneath the lake’s surface.
• Hawa Mahal Palace – is a pyramidal shaped structure with the most intriguing façade. Five storeys high, it looks like a honeycomb of tiered bay windows decorated with latticework. It has 956 small windows and even more surprising is that the façade is actually the rear of the palace. Now that is some detailed effort for the back of a building.
• Jantar Mantar – is the astronomical observatory built in the 1720s. Constructed from local marble, it is home to more than a dozen working astronomical instruments created to observe time, horoscopes and constellations. The most impressive one is the Samrat Yantra (the Supreme Instrument), one of the largest and still working sundials in the world. It features a 90ft (27m) stairwell. Makes you feel as if you’re climbing towards heaven. A UNESCO site since 2010.
What is also not to be missed are the three exceptional forts used to defend the city: Nahargarh, just outside the city walls slightly northwest provides uninterrupted views over Jaipur and did a fine job keeping an eye out for potential threats; Amer, is a fort of enormous proportions best appreciated from the lake below; and Jaigarh, overlooking Amer Fort and Jaipur below. Jaigarh is also home to the 18th century cannon-on-wheels that was the largest at the time of its manufacture. It weighs a whopping 50 tonnes. In 2013, Amer was listed as a UNESCO site.
The history and architecture in Jaipur
are immensely rich. It would take quite some time to explore it in its
entirety.
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