Lalitha Mahal: an architectural fantasy come to life

Lalitha Mahal in Mysuru bears a striking resemblance to the St Paul’s Cathedral in London. DH File Photo

The lavish banquet hall with the stained glass roof. PTI Photo

Seen from a distance, the Lalitha Mahal palace gleams and glistens, an ethereal confection in pure white that seems to emerge out of the green landscape around it. Up close, it loses none of its beauty. In fact, it wears its age very well indeed. The palace recently celebrated a century of existence since its foundation stone was laid by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar in November 1921.

Lalitha Mahal is Mysore’s second largest palace after Amba Vilas.

Originally called the New Guests Mansion, it was built to house distinguished visitors to Mysore. This might explain why, in contrast to the Amba Vilas Palace, this structure was built in a very European, neo-Classical style. The building was designed by Edwin Wolleston Fritchley who was already intimately familiar with Mysore, having worked with Henry Irwin in the design and construction of the Amba Vilas Palace a few years earlier.

Perhaps Fritchley, or the Maharaja himself, or both, felt that guests from outside India would be more comfortable in a European-styled building.

“The palace was named after the eastern portion of Chamundi Hills which is called Lalithadri,” says Rajachandra Urs, family historian of the Wadiyars. “That is why even the model village nearby was called Lalithadripura,” he explains.

Lalitha Mahal was built at a cost of about Rs 13 lakhs. The contractor was B Munivenkatappa. Work continued on it through the 1920s. It was handed over to the Maharaja in 1930, though minor construction work continued for a year more.

Archival records indicate that Fritchley had actually prepared drawings for two additional blocks, one each to the north and south of the main building, each of which was to cost another Rs 4.5 lakhs. However, to curtail expenses, these blocks and a few other structures were not approved by the Government and so were never constructed.

Interestingly, a book containing original plans and elevations for the building, including the additional blocks, was found in 2011.

Sir Mirza Ismail once referred to Lalitha Mahal as a monument to Fritchley’s genius. For their part, Europeans were struck, almost startled, by its obvious similarity to St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The historian David Cannadine referred to it as “an extraordinary architectural fantasy” while architectural historian Philip Davies described it as “nothing less than a bold attempt to transpose St Paul’s Cathedral to a South Indian setting.”

The most arresting feature of Lalitha Mahal is its great, central dome. Just like the dome in St Paul’s, Lalitha Mahal’s dome is also two-storeyed. It has a clear footing or base and then an extended, colonnaded drum on which the dome stands. And just as in St Paul’s, a stone lantern adorns the top of the dome in this Mysuru counterpart too.

But there the similarity to St Paul’s ends. The rest of two two-storeyed building is resolutely neoclassical but bears scant resemblance to St Paul’s.

The entrance has a projected porch with a standard triangular pediment that would not be out of place in Greece. Rooms extend on either side on both the floors, opening out onto corridors with double ionic columns. The parapets are decorated with urn-like finials and in typical neoclassical fashion, the cornice is decorated with dentils.

Fritchley also added two smaller versions of the central dome on the ends of the façade.

The interiors are as lavishly appointed as you would expect of a palace for royal guests. A grand central staircase of lustrous Venetian marble appears almost as if it is made of glass.

The banqueting halls have roofs of stained glass. The regal ballroom with its wooden floor on springs is justly famous. Carved wooden shutters, decorative motifs on the walls, life-size portraits of the Wadiyars, sumptuous carpets (including a few that were made by prisoners in the Central Jail in Bengaluru), Belgian mirrors, period furniture and exquisitely patterned floor tiles all add to the palace’s opulence.

In the days of the Maharaja, several important guests were put up at Lalitha Mahal, including visiting viceroys like Lords Willingdon in 1933 and Linlithgow in 1938. They were usually housed in suites on the first floor from where they could enjoy the lovely views of Chamundi Hills on one side or of the city of Mysore on the other.

Lalitha Mahal also hosted royalty visiting from other states such as Travancore. Several conferences and meetings were held here, too, including for instance the All-India Industries Conference in 1939.

From 1974, the palace began playing host to guests of a different kind when the India Tourism Development Corporation converted it into a hotel. The palace was renovated and expanded, adding 32 rooms to the original 22.

Since 2018, the hotel has been managed by Jungle Lodges and Resorts.

Though it has not been a royal palace for several decades now, the royal aura lingers on even today in the Lalitha Mahal.

(Meera Iyer is the author of ‘Discovering Bengaluru’ and the Convenor of INTACH Bengaluru Chapter.)