City Palace, Udaipur

The City Palace at Udaipur was begun in 1553 by Maharana Udai Singh II of the Sisodia Rajput dynasty, who founded the complex when he relocated his capital from Chittor, and successive rulers continued building on the site for roughly four centuries, with contributions from twenty-two generations of the ruling family spanning the sixteenth through twentieth centuries. Constructed entirely of granite and marble, the palace fuses Rajasthani Rajput architectural tradition with Mughal decorative influence, and rather than a single building it comprises eleven separate palaces interconnected by courtyards and corridors, built up piecemeal as each ruler added his own wing. Its interiors are known for delicate mirror-work, marble inlay, murals, silver work and colored glass, most famously in the Mor Chowk, a courtyard whose peacock mosaics are assembled from some five thousand individual pieces of colored glass. The complex stands on the eastern bank of Lake Pichola in the Rajasthani city of Udaipur, sited on a ridge that gives it panoramic views over the lake and the surrounding city, including the nearby Lake Palace and Jagdish Temple. Its long, continuous construction across so many generations makes it one of the largest and most architecturally layered palace complexes in India.