The Pink City — Rajput palaces, an 18th-century planned grid, and dal baati churma at the fort gates
Jaipur is India's most architecturally coherent city — the walled Pink City was painted terracotta in 1876 on order of Maharaja Ram Singh II to honour the visiting Prince of Wales, a colour rule still enforced today on all buildings within the old walls. The city was designed from scratch in 1727 by the court architect Vidyadhar Chakravarti for Maharaja Jai Singh II on a Vedic cosmological grid: nine rectangular blocks representing the nine divisions of the universe, with the royal axis aligned on the Amer Fort ridge to the north. The food is Rajput: dal baati churma (lentil stew, baked wheat…
Jaipur was founded in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II — astronomer, administrator, and the most powerful Rajput ruler of his era — as a new capital on the plains below the hill fortresses of Amber (his ancestral seat, 11km north) and Nahargarh. Amber's water supply had become insufficient for a growing court; the plains location allowed the planned grid city to be built exactly as designed, with wide boulevards and a sewage system incorporated into the original plan. Jai Singh II built five astronomical observatories across India; the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur (1734) is the largest and most…