Jaipur and Amer: Court, City and Rajasthan

Amer before Jaipur

The Kachwaha rulers established their court at Amer, where the hilltop fort-palace complex records centuries of Rajput court culture and alliance, including important relationships with the Mughal Empire. Amer and Jaipur should therefore be understood together rather than as unrelated tourist sites.

A planned new capital

In the eighteenth century Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II shifted his capital to Jaipur. The new city was planned through a regular street and market system and became associated with astronomy through the Jantar Mantar observatory. Later rulers and colonial-era changes added new architectural layers.

Craft, commerce and colour

Jaipur became a major centre for textiles, jewellery, stonework, painting and other crafts. Its familiar “Pink City” identity dates to the nineteenth-century painting of prominent facades and should not be mistaken for an ancient colour rule applying to all of Rajasthan.

Regional context

The city sits within a state formed in the twentieth century from numerous princely states. Rajasthan’s forts and palaces often dominate outside representations, but the archive should also attend to markets, workers, transport, families and rural-urban connections.