City Palace
Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh’s City Palace is in the heart of the walled city of Jaipur. This is the official residence of the former royal family, although the outer courtyard and the the ground floor are open to the public. It is a mix of Mughal and Rajput architecture which has continued to be expanded into the 20th century. The City Palace complex consists of multiple structures. Unfortunately, the new entrance seems to be off to the side so the first place we entered into was the Diwan-E-Khas, the Hall of Private Audience to host visiting dignitaries. This is an open marble pavilion with sublime decorated arches built on it. I spend over 3 hours in here shooting a TV commercial! It houses two gangajali’s, large silver vessels, that were used by Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh to take Ganges water to England whenever he travelled there (to avoid drinking the unclean English water). These are the world’s largest silver objects of any kind – 345 kg of silver each.
If we had entered from the old palance entrance, we would first come upon Mubarak Mahal. This is a building constructed completely from marble (akin to the Taj Mahal). This was build to welcome visitors and is currently a textile museum. Once you go past this, to your right, is the Diwan-E-Aam, the Hall of Public Audience. Interestingly, this hall is the more private – with walls. There is a built in platform that covers most of the middle of the hall. We could not determine if this is where people sat (likely), or if this was a table (unlikely). This is a museum for the gigantic Mughal Persian carpets and many precious and ancient manuscripts, including some miniature manuscripts. Included in these were the miniature Bhagavat Gita’s from Emperor Aurangzeb’s reigh – these were made small to hide them from Aurangzeb’s view so that they would not be persecuted by him. It was very exciting to see all these and feel the life-and-times of those who used them.
Finally we walked through the Chandra Mahal, the 7 story residence of the palace. The last Maharaja’s widow, 98 year old Gayetri Devi, still lives in this part of the palace with her family. There is a large court with every door in and out gorgeously decorated. The most striking was the Peacock above the door through which the court is entered from the outside.
