Maharajas' palaces

by Sylvie Raulet

From the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, many Indian princes, nawabs, rajas and maharajas as well as wealthy merchants abandoned their refined traditional lifestyle in order to emulate that of their colonial British occupiers. They commissioned British and European architects to design new palaces in styles ranging from Indo-Saracenic to pseudo-Versailles, brought in artists from abroad to decorate them and lived in an opulence not seen since the court of the Sun King. This book, photographed over a period of several years, shows the remnants of this bizarre mixture of European taste and Oriental vulgarity as seen in the palaces of India's now defunct rulers. Kitsch, exoticism and enchantment reign in a publication that will delight everybody interest in India, the 19th century, the Raj and exotic decoration.