A palace built to feed a kingdom
A teenage king: Maharaja Umaid Singh came to the throne of Jodhpur as a teenager in 1918.
A modern ruler: a keen aviator, a sportsman and a reformer who loved new machines.
Famine relief: when famine struck Marwar in the 1920s, he chose a public works project large enough to employ thousands for years.
- Built
- 18 November 1929 to 1943
- Built by
- Maharaja Umaid Singh, architect Henry Vaughan Lanchester
- Open
- The museum wing, with its own entrance, check the day's hours with us
- Allow
- About an hour
- Best time
- Late morning, after Mehrangarh
- Photography
- Rules differ between gardens and galleries, follow the signs
- Getting there
- A short drive from the old city, to the museum gate
- The workforce: some two to three thousand labourers, masons and carvers.
- Slow on purpose: the palace was built slowly so the wages kept flowing.
- The foundation stone: laid on 18 November 1929 on Chittar Hill, then a bare, rocky rise south-east of the old city.
- Finished in 1943: the last great palace of princely India, and one of the largest private residences in the world.
- Four years: Umaid Singh lived in it only that long. He died in 1947, the year India became independent.
- Chittar Palace: what Jodhpur people still call it, after the hill.
- The city's palace: many families had a grandfather or great-grandfather who worked on it, which is why the city feels it belongs to them.
- The wider story: our piece on the Jodhpur royal family.
An English architect, a Polish painter and a lost ship
The architect: Henry Vaughan Lanchester, a British town planner and architect who had worked across India.
The plan: his firm, Lanchester and Lodge, drew a vast symmetrical palace in golden sandstone under a central dome.
Inside: 347 rooms, several courtyards, a throne room, a banqueting hall and its own underground swimming pool.
- Architects
- Lanchester and Lodge
- Rooms
- 347
- Inner dome
- About 31 metres
- Grounds
- About 26 acres
- Interiors
- Stefan Norblin
- The grounds: about 26 acres, much of it gardens.
- Local stone: quarried near the site, carried on a railway line the maharaja built for it.
- No mortar: blocks were dressed with interlocking joints, a technique that took great skill and kept the workforce busy.
- Fine materials: Makrana marble, the stone of the Taj Mahal, inside, with Burmese teak.
- The lost ship: furnishings ordered from London, the story goes, were lost at sea when their ship was sunk during the war.
- Stefan Norblin: a Polish painter and designer who had fled Europe and found work with Indian princes.
- His work: much of the furniture, and murals including the throne room in the east wing.
- The result: some of the finest Art Deco interiors in Asia, with lacquer, chrome and glass, geometric floors, and Indian gods and heroes painted in a European hand.
Indo-Deco, explained in plain words
Indo-Deco: what architects call the style, and Umaid Bhawan is its finest example.
European bones: a strict, symmetrical plan, a grand central axis, and a dome that owes something to the Beaux-Arts buildings of Paris and London.
A Rajput skyline: small domed chhatris, open pavilions on slender pillars, rise from the corners and wings, as on the forts and cenotaphs of Marwar.
- Where chhatris come from: our piece on what a chhatri is.
- Art Deco inside: the most fashionable style of the 1920s and 1930s, all clean lines, stepped shapes and new materials. Indian princes adored it.
- Desert colour: the stone, called dun or golden, was chosen to suit the landscape.
- Natural cooling: thick walls and high ceilings keep the rooms cool in a way no air conditioner of the time could.
- A taste, not the whole: the museum wing shows the stone, proportions and furniture, and the dome rising behind the terraces.
- For the full scale: step back to the far end of the lawns, or look across from the fort in the evening.
- Three chapters: our architecture guide puts Umaid Bhawan beside Mehrangarh and Jaswant Thada.
Walking through the museum
The cars at the gate
Before the doors: the maharajas' classic cars, polished and parked in front of the building.
- The collection: a family that loved machines, from grand touring cars of the interwar years to later models.
- Who stops first: children, and most fathers.
The family photographs
The story in pictures: the building rising out of scaffolding, polo teams, state visits and weddings.
- A boy king: the young Gaj Singh II, who came to the title as a small boy in 1952.
- Best history lesson: for the years between the British treaties and the end of princely rule.
The clocks
What people remember: wall clocks, table clocks and novelty clocks of every shape, some shaped like lighthouses and windmills.
- The sound: their ticking fills the room.
- A reminder: this palace was built in the age of the gramophone and the wristwatch.
Glass, crockery and the dining table
- Royal entertaining: imported glass, porcelain and silver from the 1930s and 1940s, when a banquet here might seat hundreds.
- Look for: pieces bearing the Jodhpur crest, ordered from the best makers in Europe.
Trophies, arms and the Victorian banner
Hunting trophies: including stuffed leopards, from the shikar culture of the princely era, which we explain plainly rather than celebrate.
- Weapons: on display too.
- The 1877 banner: a large ceremonial banner from the reign of Queen Victoria, when India's princes were given heraldic flags at the great assemblage in Delhi.
Royal portraits and Art Deco furniture
The portraits: a hall lining up the rulers of Jodhpur.
- The Norblin era: curved wood, lacquer, inlay and chrome.
- Notice: lotus forms and elephants drawn with the clean lines of European Deco.
The Jodhpur the palace was built for
Umaid Singh added flying, and Jodhpur's airfield became a stop on the early air routes across India. A palace with a vast dome, a throne room painted by a European artist and an underground pool was the natural home of such a ruler. From the lanes below Mehrangarh, it must have looked like the future arriving on a hill.
A rich state: Jodhpur came out of the nineteenth century as one of the richest princely states in Rajputana.
The long peace: after the 1818 treaty the state built railways across the desert, opened trade routes to the ports of Sindh and collected revenue from salt and wool.
- British treaty
- 1818
- Cavalry
- The Jodhpur Lancers
- Haifa charge
- September 1918
- Independence
- 1947
- Joined Rajasthan
- 1949
- English tastes: the family travelled to England, sent sons to school there and brought back new tastes in furniture, cars and sport.
- Sir Pratap Singh: the soldier and regent whose name lives on in Jodhpur breeches made the city famous for polo and cavalry.
- The Jodhpur Lancers: the state's cavalry fought in the First World War and are remembered for their charge at Haifa in September 1918, alongside the Mysore Lancers.
- In the museum: the polo photographs and uniforms come from this world.
- Not hidden: the museum does not pretend this world was not built on privilege, or that the famine years were anything but desperate for most of Marwar.
- What came after: independence in 1947, the merger into Rajasthan in 1949, and a family learning to live as citizens. Our guides talk about it all.
- The wider picture: our history of Rajasthan and Rajput dynasties guides.
A home, a hotel and a museum under one dome
The home: the family lives in one wing. Maharaja Gaj Singh II, whom most of Jodhpur calls Bapji, is very much a presence in the city.
The hotel: opened to guests in 1971, and now run by the Taj group.
- Residence
- One wing, the royal family's home
- Hotel
- Since 1971, run by the Taj group
- Museum
- Its own entrance and garden
- Privy purses
- Abolished in 1971
- The museum: visitors who come for it see only that wing and its lawns.
- A survival strategy: after 1947 the princely families lost their states, and in 1971 the government abolished their privy purses. Many palaces fell into ruin.
- What worked: the hotel paid for the palace's upkeep, and the museum made a slice of it public.
- Same thinking: it also gave Jodhpur the Mehrangarh Museum Trust. Read the royal families today.
- To see more: stay or dine there. We book terrace tables for guests staying elsewhere.
- The hotel side: our page on Umaid Bhawan Palace.
Three maharajas in one building
Umaid Singh, the builder
Reign: 1918 to 1947.
- His work: he modernised the state and encouraged irrigation and schools.
- Flying: Jodhpur became an early centre of Indian aviation, and the city's airfield has its roots in his era.
- His great project: the palace.
Hanwant Singh, the brief reign
Reign: from 1947, when he saw Jodhpur join the Indian Union.
- Politics: he went into politics and died in an air crash in 1952, during the first general election campaign.
- His heir: a four-year-old son. The photographs from these years have a poignancy visitors notice.
Gaj Singh II, the restorer
Reign: he came to the title as a child in 1952, and has become one of the best-loved figures in Rajasthan.
- Under him: the hotel opened, the Mehrangarh Museum Trust was founded and many of Marwar's heritage projects began.
- His story: our profile of Maharaja Gaj Singh.
The gardens and the view back to the fort
The high point: Chittar Hill is the highest ground on Jodhpur's south-eastern side, and the main front looks over lawns and terraces to the old fort.
What you can see: the line of the old city wall, the blue of Brahmpuri at the foot of the cliff and, on a clear winter morning, the clock tower rising from the bazaar.
- A geography lesson: the best place we know to explain the city, and we often pull out a map here.
- The planting: bougainvillea, palms and lawns that look almost improbable in the Thar.
- Early morning: peacocks wander across them.
- Residents only: the hotel's own gardens below the main terraces, but the museum lawns give you the essential view.
- Late afternoon: the sandstone turns from pale gold to honey and the dome glows. The photographer's hour.
- More light: our photography tips cover the rest of the city.
The best hour and the best season
Our timing: late morning after an opening-time visit to Mehrangarh, or early afternoon after lunch.
Made for heat: indoors and quick, so it suits the hottest hours and rests feet after fort ramps and stepwell stairs.
- Best hour
- Late morning or early afternoon
- For the facade
- Late afternoon light
- Season
- October to March
- Clearest views
- December and January
- Summer
- Pleasant even at midday
- Facade photographs: the low late-afternoon light warms the sandstone, but the museum may be closing, so check the day's hours with us.
- December and January: green gardens and air clear enough to see Mehrangarh sharply from the lawns.
- April to June: one of the few sights that is pleasant at midday.
- Monsoon: the hill turns briefly green and clouds make the dome dramatic.
- Month by month: our Jodhpur month-by-month guide.
How long to allow
Twenty minutes: what most visitors give it, the cars, a glance at the clocks and a photograph. You will miss most of the story.
About an hour: our usual pace, for the photographs, the clocks, the glass and crockery, the 1877 banner, the portraits and the view from the gardens.
- Quick look
- Twenty minutes
- Our usual pace
- About an hour
- With a guide
- An hour and a half
- With the terrace
- Add an evening
- An hour and a half: with a guide who knows the family's history, time to read the construction photographs and look for mortar in the stone joints.
- An evening more: stay or book a table on the terrace, and watch Mehrangarh across the city at dusk.
- With children: point them to the cars at the gate, the lighthouse and windmill clocks and, early in the morning, the peacocks wandering on the lawns.
How to visit well
The right gate: tell your driver you want the museum entrance, or he may take you to the hotel lobby.
Time: about an hour. With a guide who knows the family's history, an hour and a half passes easily.
- Entrance
- Separate from the hotel's
- Allow
- An hour, ninety minutes with a guide
- Access
- Fairly level ground
- Dress
- Relaxed, voices down near the residence
- Limited mobility: one of Jodhpur's easier sights. Tell us in advance and we will check the day's arrangements.
- Photography: follow the signs and ask the attendants.
- A family home: keep voices down near the residence side.
- Little to buy: which we count as a blessing. For crafts, see our Jodhpur shopping advice.
- Hotel guests: the museum is a short walk through the grounds, an easy arrival-afternoon outing.
What most visitors miss
Construction photographs: the scaffolding and crowds of workers bring the famine-relief story to life.
Indian subjects, European style: on the furniture and panels.
- The reverse view: Mehrangarh from the museum gardens, framed between the palms.
- The novelty clocks: lighthouses and windmills, easy to miss among grander pieces.
- The stone joints: run your eye along the outer walls and look for mortar.
- The 1877 banner: it places Jodhpur inside the history of the British Raj in one object.
Who will love it, and who can skip it
Twentieth-century lovers: design, cars, photographs, the end of empire and the families who lived through it.
Architects and designers: few places in India did Art Deco on this scale and with this much money.
- Families: short, cool and full of things children can point at.
- Palace guests: go simply to understand the building you are sleeping in.
- Skip it if: your time is very short and you prefer the old city, or you have seen several palace museums already.
- The alternative: a drink on the palace terrace at sunset shows you the building, the gardens and the view, and most of what the museum is trying to say.
- On a longer journey: pair it with Lalgarh in Bikaner and the Rambagh in Jaipur, the same story of princes meeting the modern world in different styles.
What to pair it with
Our things to do in Jodhpur guide has more, and our vintage cars experience page explains where else in Rajasthan the princely car collections can be seen.
- Mehrangarh
- First thing in the morning
- Jaswant Thada
- Late afternoon
- Sardar Market
- Dusk
- Mandore
- North of the city, with Bal Samand
Mehrangarh, first thing
- The order: the fort at opening time, then across the city for the museum before lunch.
- The whole arc: together they span Jodhpur from 1459 to 1943.
Jaswant Thada, in the late afternoon
- After a rest: back up towards the fort for the marble cenotaph, which glows in the low sun.
Sardar Market, at dusk
- End in the old city: mirchi bada, lassi and the clock tower lit against the evening.
Bal Samand and Mandore
- Older chapters: drive north for a second royal garden at Mandore and the lakeside palace of Bal Samand.
Where to stay nearby
Umaid Bhawan Palace
- Under the dome: the obvious choice.
- Ask for: a room facing the gardens and the fort on its far ridge.
Ajit Bhawan
- Close by: in the newer city.
- Its story: a family-run palace built for a younger brother of Umaid Singh, and one of the first heritage hotels in Rajasthan.
RAAS Jodhpur
- In the old city: under Mehrangarh, with the fort in your window and the clock tower a short walk away.
- Compare all three: our luxury hotels in Jodhpur guide.
