After an elephant ride or jeep ride to the UNESCO world heritage site’s Amber Palace gates, we arrived at a humongous courtyard within the palace walls. I’m not going to bore you by giving you the history and blow-by-blow of each unique area of Amber Palace, as Wikipedia does an excellent job breaking this down. Instead, I am going to discuss the themes that I observed in the Amber Palace because exploring the Amber Palace was amazing, but understanding the largest themes of the structure is what I found truly interesting.
This article will cover the themes of Amber Palace rather than the full detailed experience of visiting Amber Palace.
Google Maps Location: Amber Palace, Jaipur
How to get there: Fly or drive to Jaipur and get a car to the Amber Palace, then take an elephant or a jeep to the main gate.
How long do I need here: A visit should take 3-4 hours in total
Amber Palace Experience Overview
A visit to the Amber Palace revealed common themes of this gargantuan structure. Notably, the entire area is surrounded by pretty walls, walls that are intended to keep this area safer and more private. The Amber Palace was also dominated by an open-air design, where besides the huge courtyards it appeared that nearly every structure had at least one wall that was absent. Beyond the marble and yellow and pink sandstone, the designers of this fort/palace added a wide number of artistic features that transitioned my opinion of Amber Palace to Awww Palace – truly there were some stunning artistic features that were worth the visit.
Themes of Amber Palace
Amber Palace has a lot to offer a visitor, I like to think about what truly makes an impression on me, as a visitor. Especially in such a prominent place as Amber Palace. Here are the themes as I see them.
- Arriving in Amber Palace – This is a journey regardless of how you enter
- Courtyards – There are many of them and they are all unique and interesting
- Open air spaces – Nearly every structure had wide open spaces to allow air to flow through
- Artistic features – It wouldn’t be a fancy palace without art, right?
Arriving at Amber Palace
I took an elephant ride to the Sun Gate which appears in this photo from the inside. The trek up was longer than expected with some interesting sites to see along the way. Once you enter the courtyard, you are brought to a platform to disembark from your elephant and begin your journey inside of the Amber Palace. Sun Gate appears on the eastern side of the building to highlight sunrise, while the Moon Gate appears on the west side.
The Courtyards
When you first enter Amber Palace you find yourself in an immense, intimidating courtyard. Courtyards in Amber Palace are a theme, as there were 4 more courtyards to be found in the structure. Each was amazing for widely different reasons. The one pictured here is the largest, but most plain courtyard the one at the sun gate. More are pictured at the end of this article.
Open Air Spaces in Amber Palace
While walking through the Amber Palace I couldn’t help but notice how I rarely saw an enclosed building. In fact, most buildings had at least one wall that was absent entirely. If a structure had 4 walls, then huge open-air windows were built into it allowing the air to flow through the building and to help cool it down. In addition, the lake in front of the palace was a strategic way to help cool the wind as it blew toward the palace. More pictures of open-air areas at the end of this article.
Artistic features
You can’t have a beautiful palace without some consideration for art. The art of Amber Palace is embedded in each built structure. There are no statues or paintings hanging on the walls, instead, the walls themselves are a piece of art! This opens the artistic opportunities of the builders, as you can see from this photo of Ganesh Pol, the solid walls are intricately decorated! While Western art is focused more on paintings and tapestries, India was focused on Fully building the art into a structure. See more art pictures at the end of this article.
I will note that they also had a puppet show for tourists to enjoy.
What is it like being in Amber Palace?
Overall walking through Amber Palace is very interesting. The palace is beautiful and needs to be experienced to truly understand the breadth and the amazing work put into it back in the 16th century. It does get warm at times and it is crowded despite the time of day that you go, but there is some shade within the buildings to help with that and you can begin to appreciate how the Amber Palace was designed to promote a cool breeze going through every room. So get out there and experience it!
Pictures of Amber Palace
