Hawa Mahal
Part Of The UNESCO Listed Walled City Of Jaipur; On The Jaipur Composite Monument Ticket · Jaipur, Rajasthan
The five-storey honeycomb facade of pink sandstone that has become the emblem of Jaipur, built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh as an extension of the palace so that the royal women, who lived in purdah, could watch the street processions and life of the bazaar without being seen. It is covered in nearly a thousand small latticed windows, whose screens also funnel the breeze through, which is where the name, the Palace of Winds, comes from. What surprises most visitors is how shallow it is: the famous front is almost a screen, only a room or so deep at the top, and the building inside is a set of ramped floors rather than grand rooms, with small courtyards and a small museum. The view is the point, in both directions. From the street, and especially from the rooftop cafes opposite in the early morning when the sun hits the facade, it is one of the classic sights of India. From the top floors, you look down through the lattice at the traffic of Siredeori Bazaar as the royal women once did. The entrance is round the back. It is on the Jaipur composite ticket.
Hawa Mahal Road, Badi Choupad, Jaipur, Rajasthan, 302002, India
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED; confirm before planning. The usual pattern for a Rajasthan state monument: open daily from about 9 am to about 4:30 or 5 pm, with the ticket counter closing a little earlier, and no regular weekly closure. The facade is floodlit after dark and can be seen from the street at any time. Festival days and VIP visits can close it at short notice, and the east-facing facade is in shade from late morning, which ruins photographs taken after about 11 am.