SUJÁN Rajmahal Palace

The Hotel

Rajmahal Palace was built in 1729 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II — the founder of Jaipur — as a royal residence and pleasure-garden retreat outside the original Pink City walls. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it served as a guesthouse for visiting British Residents and as a quiet alternative to the City Palace; in 1958, after Indian independence and the constitutional integration of the princely states, it became the formal residence of Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II and his third wife Maharani Gayatri Devi (Ayesha) — the most internationally photographed Indian royal of the twentieth century — and remained their home until Man Singh's death in 1970, with Gayatri Devi continuing to use the palace through the 1980s. The list of guests who passed through during that residency reads as a mid-twentieth-century international register: Jackie Kennedy in March 1962, Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, the Shah of Iran, Princess Margaret, and the Prince of Wales among others.

The current hotel restoration was led by SUJÁN — Anjali and Jaisal Singh's small ultra-luxury group, with Sherbagh and Jawai Leopard Camp also in the portfolio — opening on 10 February 2014. The interior architecture and design programme was led by Adil Ahmad and emphasised the property's Indian-Art-Deco moment of the 1930s and 1940s — pink-on-pink wallpapers in fourteen distinct patterns, hand-blocked Sanganeri textiles, lacquered chinoiserie, and a portrait collection drawn from the family archives. The property was a Relais & Châteaux member during the SUJÁN era. In 2024 operating responsibility transitioned to RAAS Hotels — Aman-alumnus Nikhilendra Singh's small heritage group with Raas Devigarh in Udaipur and Raas Jodhpur — under the Rajmahal Palace RAAS banner; the property continues to be owned by the Royal House of Jaipur.

There are thirteen suites and two Royal Apartments, each individually designed and named — the Maharani's Suite (Gayatri Devi's actual former bedroom, the most-requested unit), the Maharaja's Suite, the Mountbatten Suite, the Jackie Suite (after Jackie Kennedy's 1962 stay), the Prince Albert Suite, the Queen Elizabeth Suite, and others. The two Royal Apartments are the headline categories — multi-room, with private terraces and adjoining drawing rooms. The dining programme runs across three rooms: the Orient Occident formal dining room with a French-inflected European menu under the chef de cuisine, the 51 Shades of Pink lounge for cocktails and afternoon tea (the name from the property's wallpaper count), and the Polo Bar with photographs of Maharaja Man Singh's polo career. The Eternal Mewar Spa offers Ayurvedic and contemporary treatments. The garden art-deco pool is set in the four-acre formal gardens — a rare quiet swimming experience in central Jaipur.

The Rajmahal's structural advantage over the Rambagh — its larger sister palace down the road — is intimacy. Fourteen suites means a staff-to-room ratio of roughly 4:1, the lobby and dining rooms are never crowded, and the property feels closer to a private house than a hotel; for travellers who want to stay inside a working palace rather than a palace hotel, the Rajmahal is the clearer answer. The trade-off is that the inventory is small and that high-season nights book three to six months ahead. The position on Sardar Patel Marg in Civil Lines is roughly ten minutes from the City Palace and fifteen from Hawa Mahal — central but not in the Pink City proper.

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