The stunning art and spectacular architecture of City Palace, Jaipur! 

This is the most visited Palace in India. Foreigners and Indian visitors dream about visiting this Palace. And I'm not an exception because I always dreamt getting clicked in this gorgeous palace. There is a long history of the place and if you google it, you will come to know history very easily. I hardly gave any attention to history too much because my focus was totally on art, paintings, crafts, weapons, utensils, clothing, architecture which were exhibited in the City Palace Museum.

This place consists of a museum and the palace where the real descendants of Lord Ram, the present royals of Jaipur stay. Entry tickets are available for either of the places. But, to visit the current royals, you need to spend a bomb of 3000 rupees and to visit the museum, you need to spend 200 rupees if you are an Indian visitor and 500 rupees if you are a foreigner. And there are many other options available with price tags, like inside tour guides, audio guides and many more. Visiting palaces in Jaipur involve monetary transactions. At the end of the day, it is all about royalty right.

Switching on to the art of the City Palace, it is mostly an amalgamation of Rajasthani and Mughal art. History says that Muslim rulers of the Mughal empire and Rajputs from Rajasthan share a very good bond since the marriage of Akbar and Jodha Bai. Hence, the art and architecture mostly resemble the culture of Rajasthanis and Mughals. If you see the paintings inside, they are mostly floral and fauna replicas like elephants, peacocks, tigers, parrots and many more. The museum itself is enough for a person to roam and see around for hours and hours. You will surely get tired if you make it visit the whole palace museum.

Divided into various parts with various kinds of architecture, the City Palace museum consists of a Govind Dev Ji temple, Sabha Niwas, Sarvato Bhadra, Pritam Niwas Chowk, Chandra Mahal, Mubarak Mahal, the clock tower. The architecture is spell-bounding. You will just open your jaws if you see every hall and every place inside the premises. The detailing arts on the architectural walls and pillars of this palace is just exceptional. Every building consists of many floors and many entrances and many exits. This place is huge and vast. So, if you walk, you feel like walking miles and miles, but you never get tired, because every step you take, you find either an exciting art or beautiful architecture.

During my visit to the palace, my favorite was the Mubarak Mahal and Sarvato Bhadra courtyard. The peacock gate was the love at first sight for me. These places were so huge, that it felt like my two eyes were insufficient to fill the whole beauty at once. Hence, I borrowed my camera lens and clicked too many beautiful pictures of these detailed arts and architecture marks of City Palace. It took me around 3 hours to see the whole place and I still couldn't satisfy myself wholly as I was running out of the time because I had to visit other places too.

Besides, City Palace, there situated the Jantar Mantar, many people visited but I skipped after seeing the rush of people. Maybe I will check it out on my next visit. Because the content inside the City Palace museum galleries took all the time. Who doesn't like to explore the olden royal days, the costumes and weapons of the Maharajahs, their love of art and painting, their royal customs and the stories behind their wars, rituals, guests and many more exciting yet edgy pictures of the royals.

The City Palace museum consists of various galleries that were exhibited in various mahals inside the premises. You can find Sabha Niwas, textile gallery, Sileh Khana, painting gallery, photo gallery, and transport gallery. The whole City palace was mostly about Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II and his descendants since he ruled and shifted his ruling place from Amber to Jaipur in Rajasthan.

Soon after I visited the palace, I stepped in the Mubarak Mahal in which the ground floor has contributed to the exhibition of the textile gallery where I found the various types of royal clothing and also the real clothes worn by the kings and queen of those times 18th and 19th centuries. The gallery shows you a clear picture of how the fashion got evolved since the royals ruled the country and also how the textile designers and the royal fabric makers have done an exquisite job to impress their kings and queens with their talents. The threads, the fabrics, the stones, the work, the craft on the clothes, really make you fall in love with the royal fashion. Well, being a fashion freak, I could relate to the work.

And then I stepped into the Arms and Armour collection. I felt scared after seeing those too many weapons which include swords, knives, pistols, guns, cannons, pocket weapons, iron armors for soldiers, commanders, princes, and kings. I have seen a replica of a horse on which they have exhibited how a royal or a warhorse used to perfectly armed with various leather materials and iron materials to protect those animals in war. The royal elephants and royal horses used to be the vehicles in wars. You can also find chariots and camel saddles too in the transport gallery. Most of the visitors loved viewing all those weapons. As a peace lover, I couldn't spend much time in it. But if you love fights and wars, this place is the best for you to witness how the royal wars used to happen and also you can read about every weapon in a detailed manner.

Coming to the art, trust me it will be tiring enough if you manage to see every single photograph and art which is exhibited inside the museum. There are thousands of photographs of the rules who rule Jaipur and also the pictures of the guests who visited the Kingdom, including, Mughals, Europeans, Portuguese, and Americans. Because Jaipur is the hub of honoring guests from various kingdoms. This is why they could manage to maintain good relations with others and also less prone to attacks from outsiders. The art specifies the culture of Rajasthanis, Deccans, and Mughals. You can find Mughal art and Rajasthani Miniature art paintings inside the premises. You can see people painting inside right in front of your eyes, which is mesmerizing indeed.

In Sabha Niwas, you can find royal chairs and seats, which were used to make royal officials sit during the events of kingdoms or while honoring the guests. This is mostly for the public audience where the Maharajahs used to deliver law and order and also talk with the public.

But, the Sarvato Bhadra courtyard is huge and perfectly crafted in the blended version of Rajput and Mughal architecture, specially made for the private audience where Maharajahs used to arrange private performances and meetings with the guests. The view of this courtyard is breathtaking. And here you can find the world's largest silver vessels made of too many silver coins melted to be largest silver vessels which are filled with the water from the Ganges and called Gangajhalis.

The peacock entrance gates are beautifully crafted with rock and marble and the walls are painted with various flowers in various colors. The maroon painted walls suggest the name of the Pink city signature style. The walls are painted with Pink, White, and Yellow. Only the peacock gates are beautifully painted with various hues of peacock colors. These bring an extra flavor for the royalty behind the City Palace.

There is still a lot about this City Palace because a few words are not enough to describe the beauty of this exceptional Palace. Hence, I will come with another blog that makes you explore what are the exciting things to do inside this City Palace Museum. Till then stay tuned and also keep planning for your Jaipur trip and get excited like me!

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