Jodha Bai’s Palace

Having all facilities, provisions, and safeguards, Jodha Bai’s palace is the largest and most important part of the Imperial Harem. Built as the house of the principal queen, Jodha Bai’s Palace is a structure that reveals some of the conditions of living in the Mughal household. Consisting of a large central courtyard with buildings arranged around its periphery, the palace in plan measures 320’ X 215’. With staggered doorways to provide isolation, the only entrance is through a guarded gatehouse. The buildings attached to their inner side all face the central courtyard. Once by the gatehouse on the east, the outer facade of the wall is only interrupted thrice, the hanging pavilion of Hawa Mahal on the north and service and bathing apartments on the south. With open terraced roofs at regular intervals, most of the buildings, placed symmetrically around the square courtyard are two-storied. The structures rise up into separate blocks, in the middle of each side and at each corner. With corridors and passages communicating with each block on the ground floor, each of these blocks is a self-contained suite of living rooms. While the chambers below could be heated in cold weather, each group of apartments could be divided off from the others; the ones above always remain airy and cool. With their volute forms and the shapes of the pillars, an influence of Hindu temple architecture can be seen, in many of its elements and carved decoration, especially in the design of the niches and brackets, showing that artisans from Gujarat were assigned with the construction of the palace.