Laxmi Vilas Palace Vadodara: Architecture Guide

Vadodara's Laxmi Vilas Palace is one of the most remarkable buildings in Gujarat, and one of the grandest residences ever built in India. Its long facade of domes, towers, arches and balconies rises from landscaped grounds in the middle of the city, and it remains the home of the Gaekwad royal family. For most visitors it is simply a spectacular palace. For anyone interested in architecture, it is also one of the clearest examples of the Indo-Saracenic style — the late nineteenth-century attempt to combine Indian architectural traditions with European planning, engineering and technology.

That makes the palace unusually relevant to Indian homeowners today, who face a version of the same question its builders faced: how to live a modern life in an Indian climate while keeping a building that feels rooted in India. Some homes answer it badly, gluing plastic arches and fake domes onto concrete boxes. The palace shows a deeper way — Indian forms used for real reasons of shade, air and ceremony, built by skilled craftspeople, inside a carefully planned building. This guide explains the palace's history, its architects, its style and its parts, and then draws practical, dimensioned lessons for modern Indian homes.

The palace and its patron

Laxmi Vilas Palace was built for Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, ruler of the princely state of Baroda, who came to the throne in 1875 and reigned until his death in 1939. Sayajirao is remembered as one of the most progressive rulers of his time. During his long reign Baroda invested in education, libraries, public works, a museum, industry and social reform, and the city acquired many of the institutions and public buildings that still define Vadodara. The palace, completed in 1890, was the residential and ceremonial centre of this ambitious state.

The design was begun by Major Charles Mant, a British military engineer and architect who had already designed Indo-Saracenic buildings elsewhere in India, including the main building of Mayo College in Ajmer and the New Palace at Kolhapur. After Mant's death, the work was taken over and completed by Robert Fellowes Chisholm, one of the leading architects of the style, best known for buildings in Madras (now Chennai) such as the Senate House of the University of Madras. The palace is therefore the work of two of the main figures of Indo-Saracenic architecture.

The palace is often described as one of the largest private residences ever built, and it is frequently said to be several times larger than Buckingham Palace — figures of this kind are widely repeated, and they convey its scale even if exact comparisons depend on how area is measured. Beyond the main building, the estate holds landscaped grounds, a golf course and the Maharaja Fatehsingh Museum, which houses works from the royal collection including paintings by Raja Ravi Varma, whom Sayajirao commissioned.

What Indo-Saracenic architecture is

Indo-Saracenic — sometimes called Indo-Gothic or Indo-Islamic revival — is the name given to an architectural style developed in British India from roughly the 1860s to the early twentieth century. Saracenic was a European term of the period for Islamic architecture, and the style borrowed heavily from Mughal and other Indo-Islamic buildings. But it was never purely Islamic. Its architects also drew on Hindu temple and Rajput palace architecture, Jain carving traditions and the regional styles of Gujarat and Rajasthan, and combined them with the planning, structural methods and fashions of Victorian Europe, especially the Gothic Revival.

The result was a family of buildings that look Indian on the outside — with domes, chhatris, jharokhas, chhajjas, cusped arches and jaalis — but are often organised inside like European buildings, with corridors, staircases, symmetrical halls and specialised rooms. The style was used for railway stations, universities, courts, museums, government offices and the palaces of princely rulers, who adopted it as a way of expressing both their Indian identity and their modernity. Laxmi Vilas Palace is one of the grandest examples in the princely states.

How to read the palace facade

At first sight the palace facade can look like an overwhelming collection of towers and domes. It becomes easier to read when it is broken into a few repeated elements. The building is long and broadly horizontal, with a series of wings and pavilions; the ground and upper floors are wrapped in arcades and balconies; the roofline is broken up by domes, chhatris and towers of different heights; and a tall tower rises as the principal vertical landmark. The schematic below names the main parts. It is a diagram of the vocabulary, not a measured drawing of the palace.

Domes, towers and chhatris

The roofline of the palace is deliberately busy. Domes of different sizes cap towers and wings; small open pavilions, the chhatris borrowed from Rajput architecture, sit at corners and along the parapet; and a tall tower gives the composition a single focus. A long building can easily look monotonous; breaking its skyline into a rhythm of high and low points makes it look like a cluster of buildings, and gives it a silhouette that can be recognised from a distance.

Arcades, jharokhas and chhajjas

Below the roofline, the facade is wrapped in arcades — rows of arches carried on columns, often with pointed or multi-lobed (cusped) profiles — and in projecting balconies and windows, the jharokhas of Rajput and Mughal architecture. Deep stone projections, the chhajjas, run above openings. These elements are where style and climate meet: every one of them creates shade, and most of them create a semi-outdoor space between the hot outside and the cooler interior.

Inside: halls, courts and craft

Inside, the palace is organised around grand ceremonial spaces — most famously the Durbar Hall — along with courtyards, corridors and private apartments. Accounts of the interiors describe mosaic floors, stained-glass windows, ornamental ceilings and decorative work by both Indian and European craftsmen, together with sculpture and paintings from the royal collection. The interiors combine European ideas of the grand hall with Indian craft traditions, and they show how a building of this period mixed imported materials and techniques with local skill.

A palace designed for Gujarat's climate

For all its ornament, the palace is also a climate machine. Vadodara has hot, dry summers that regularly exceed 40 °C, a humid monsoon and a short mild winter. Before air-conditioning, a palace of this size could only be comfortable if its architecture managed sun and air. The key devices are the ones every traditional Gujarati building used, scaled up: thick masonry walls with high thermal mass; arcades and verandahs that keep the sun off the walls and windows; deep chhajjas over openings; tall rooms where hot air can rise above the occupants; openings at high level so that hot air can escape; courtyards and gardens that create pockets of cooler air; and a raised plinth that keeps the floor dry in the monsoon.

Laxmi Vilas among India's Indo-Saracenic buildings

Laxmi Vilas Palace belongs to a group of buildings that together define the Indo-Saracenic period. Comparing them helps explain what is special about each. Dates below are the commonly cited completion dates; the architects named are those generally credited.

Compared with the institutional buildings, Laxmi Vilas is unusual because it is a home — a building whose rooms had to work for daily life as well as for ceremony. That is part of why it remains so instructive. It shows the style used not just to impress, but to make a large residence workable in a hot climate.

Lessons for modern Indian homes

No family needs a palace, and copying the palace's ornament onto a modern house usually produces kitsch. But several of its ideas transfer well, and they are the ideas that made it work, not merely the ones that make it look grand. Aaditya Interior applies them most often in bungalows and larger flats, where there is room for a verandah, a double-height space or a feature arch.

1. Give the house a shaded edge

The palace's arcades are its most practical lesson. A verandah or covered sit-out along the south or west side of a bungalow keeps the sun off walls and glass, gives the family a usable outdoor room, and moves the hottest surface away from the rooms behind it. Even in a flat, a deep balcony with a solid parapet and an overhead projection does the same job for the room behind it.

2. Use the arch for proportion, not decoration

An arched opening between a living and dining room, at a pooja unit or at a foyer, can bring some of the palace's grace into a home — but only if it is proportioned and detailed properly. The arch should be part of a real opening with a real thickness, not a thin profile stuck onto a flat wall, and its proportions should relate to the room's ceiling height. The figure below gives working dimensions.

3. Height where it matters

The palace's tall rooms are not affordable in most modern homes, but height can be concentrated where it matters most. A double-height living room or stairwell in a bungalow, with openable high-level windows, gives the hot-air-rising effect and a sense of grandeur. In a flat, the same idea becomes a disciplined ceiling plan: keep the false ceiling minimal in the main living space, use coves at the edges rather than lowering the whole ceiling, and never let a false ceiling drop a 3000 mm room below about 2700 mm.

4. Put craft at the centre

The palace was a showcase for craftsmanship — stone carving, mosaic, stained glass, metalwork, painting. A modern home can do the same at a sensible scale by choosing one crafted element and giving it room: a carved stone or wooden door, a jaali partition, a mosaic or inlay panel, a stained-glass window, a brass-inlaid floor border. One genuine piece made by skilled hands is worth more than a room full of imitation ornament.

Visiting the palace with an architect's eye

Most visitors walk through Laxmi Vilas looking at the objects — the paintings, the armour, the chandeliers. It is worth a second walk looking at the building itself. Stand back from the main facade first and read it as Fig. 2 does: base, middle and skyline. Notice how the arcade at ground level stays in shade for most of the day, and how much cooler the air is in it than in the open forecourt. Inside, look up: the height of the rooms, the position of the high-level openings and the way light enters through coloured glass all tell the story of a building designed before air-conditioning. Look down too, at the floors, where the craft of the period is often at its finest.

Then look at the junctions — where stone meets plaster, where a column meets an arch, where a balcony meets the wall. Junctions are where the quality of a building shows, in palaces and in flats alike. A visit is easily combined with Vadodara's other buildings of the same era and with the city's museums; the palace grounds alone deserve an unhurried morning. The checklist below is a simple way to turn a tourist visit into a design lesson.

Avoiding the theme-park trap

The danger in palace-inspired design is that it becomes costume. Moulded arches glued onto flat walls, gold paint, fake domes on a three-storey bungalow, plastic jharokhas and too many elements competing in a small space make a home look like a wedding venue rather than a palace. The palace itself avoided this because every element was real: arches had depth, domes covered real spaces, balconies could be stood on, carving was cut by skilled hands, and the overall composition was controlled by trained architects.

The modern rules follow from that. Use fewer elements, at true scale and with real depth. Choose materials honestly — real stone, real wood, real lime plaster, or well-made modern equivalents painted in quiet colours rather than gold. Keep the background calm and let one or two crafted elements stand out. And design the plan first: the palace is admired because it is a well-ordered building, not because it has many domes.

The future of the Indo-Saracenic legacy

Indo-Saracenic buildings were long dismissed by some critics as colonial hybrids. Today they are increasingly valued as heritage — as records of a moment when Indian craft traditions and modern building met — and many are being conserved, adapted and reused as museums, hotels, universities and offices. For contemporary Indian architecture, the lasting lesson is not the style itself but its intent: to build modern buildings that belong to Indian climate and Indian craft. The best contemporary Indian homes do this with entirely modern forms — deep verandahs, jaali skins, courtyards, local stone, tall shaded spaces — and in that sense the palace's ambition is very much alive.

Seven rules for palace-inspired design at home

• Borrow the climate devices first — verandahs, chhajjas, high vents, shade — and the ornament second.
• Give every arch a real reveal of at least 150–300 mm and keep 300 mm of wall above its apex.
• Limit yourself to one or two crafted features per room, made by skilled hands.
• Concentrate height in one space — a double-height living room or stair — rather than raising every room.
• Keep colours quiet: lime whites, stone, natural wood and muted tones; avoid gold paint on large surfaces.
• Put verandahs and deep projections on the south and west, where they do the most good.
• Plan the house as a clear, symmetrical or axial sequence before adding any decoration.

Frequently asked questions

Who built Laxmi Vilas Palace?

The palace was built for Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda. It was designed by Major Charles Mant, and after Mant's death the work was completed by Robert Fellowes Chisholm. It was completed in 1890.

What architectural style is Laxmi Vilas Palace?

It is Indo-Saracenic — a style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that combined Indo-Islamic (especially Mughal), Hindu, Rajput and Jain architectural elements with European Gothic Revival planning and Victorian building technology.

Is Laxmi Vilas Palace bigger than Buckingham Palace?

It is very often described as several times larger than Buckingham Palace — commonly as about four times its size. Such comparisons are widely repeated and depend on how area is measured, but they reflect the palace's exceptional scale as a private residence.

Can visitors go inside Laxmi Vilas Palace?

Yes. The palace remains the residence of the Gaekwad family, but parts of it are open to visitors, usually with an audio guide, and the Maharaja Fatehsingh Museum stands within the grounds. Timings and ticket arrangements change, so they should be checked with the palace before visiting.

What are the main features of Indo-Saracenic architecture?

Bulbous domes, chhatris (open domed pavilions), pointed and cusped arches, jharokhas (projecting balconies), chhajjas (deep projections), minaret-like towers, jaali screens and rich carving, usually arranged on a symmetrical, European-style plan with modern structure and services.