Place · Mewar capital city · India
Udaipur & the City Palace
Udaipur was founded in 1559 in a lake basin behind a ring of Aravalli hills, and became the Mewar capital after Chittorgarh fell to Akbar in 1567. The City Palace on the ridge above Lake Pichola was extended by every Maharana for three centuries and is the largest palace complex in Rajasthan.
- Date
- 1559 onward
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.576, 73.683
Worth knowing
Mewar's rulers took a vow not to reoccupy Chittorgarh until it was recovered, and never did, so this palace exists because a fortress was given up rather than retaken. The Jagdish temple beside it, of 1651, is one of very few large Nagara temples built in Rajasthan under Mughal paramountcy.
Connections (3)
- Contemporary capital withMehrangarh & Jodhpur
Rathore Jodhpur and Sisodia Udaipur are the two great Rajput courts of the Mughal period and they took opposite positions: Jodhpur accommodated and supplied generals to the empire, Mewar held out and paid for it in sieges. Mehrangarh is one of the least altered great forts in India; the Udaipur City Palace grew by accretion around a lake after Chittorgarh fell to Akbar in 1568.
- Power passed toChittorgarh
Chittorgarh was taken by Akbar in 1567 and Udaipur was founded eight years earlier as the alternative, in a lake basin behind a ring of hills. The Maharanas took a vow not to reoccupy Chittor until it was recovered and never did, so Mewar has an abandoned fortress it will not return to and a palace complex three centuries in the building that exists because of that refusal.
- Site withinUdaipur
Udaipur & the City Palace lies within Udaipur — the two sites sit about 3 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Udaipur & the City Palace is one of the specific sites that give Udaipur its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Udaipur” and “City Palace, Udaipur”. Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation records; Giles Tillotson, The Rajput Palaces (1987).
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