Mysore Palace

The building you visit dates from 1912. The wooden palace that stood before it burned down during a royal wedding in 1897, and the Wodeyars commissioned the British architect Henry Irwin to replace it. The dynasty itself goes back to the fourteenth century, so the institution is old and the architecture is Edwardian — an Indo-Saracenic design rather than a medieval one.

On Sunday evenings and through the Dasara festival, when the whole outline of the building is picked out in bulbs. It runs for a set period rather than all evening, so arriving in good time matters. Seeing the illumination needs no ticket — it is viewed from the grounds and the surrounding streets — and it is a completely different visit from the daytime interiors.

No. Photography is not permitted in the palace interiors and cameras are deposited at the entrance before you go in. Shoes are also left at the door. The exterior, the grounds and the Sunday illumination are all unrestricted, so the pictures people bring back of Mysore Palace are almost always of the outside of it.

The Durbar Hall, the open-sided public audience hall with its painted ceilings, and the Kalyana Mantapa — the octagonal marriage pavilion under a stained-glass peacock dome that was made in Glasgow and shipped out. The Gombe Thotti or doll pavilion holds the ceremonial figures and the golden howdah carried in the Dasara procession.