Jaipur

est. 1727 — the long account

Jaipur begins on the hill above it. From the eleventh century the Kachwaha Rajputs ruled from Amber, a ridge-top fortress whose handsome halls came later — largely after 1592, when Raja Man Singh, a general of Akbar's, rebuilt it with Mughal money and Mughal ideas. The Kachwahas survived by alliance, marrying into the Mughal house and fighting its wars, and Amber prospered until it ran out of room and water.

In 1727 Sawai Jai Singh II — astronomer, treaty-maker and obsessive city-planner — moved his capital onto the plain and drew it on paper first: a nine-square grid from the ancient Vastu treatises, with broad avenues, walled bazaars assigned trade by trade, and a palace at the center. It was arguably India's first planned city since antiquity. In the middle of it he built Jantar Mantar, finished by 1734, a garden of masonry instruments accurate enough to read the sky to seconds — the mind that made the city, made visible.

The pink is late: in 1876 the Maharaja had the old city painted terracotta-pink, the color of hospitality, to receive the Prince of Wales, and the order has been renewed ever since. Jaipur acceded to India in 1947 and in 1949 merged into the new state of Rajasthan, becoming its capital. What you walk today is essentially the 1727 plan still working — the gem dealers, bangle-makers and sweet shops in the bazaars Jai Singh assigned them, under the same terracotta wash.

Jaipur · Aravallis