Shiv Niwas Palace

The Hotel

Shiv Niwas Palace was built between roughly 1880 and 1910 as a royal guesthouse within the Mewar City Palace complex on Lake Pichola — the working palace of the Maharanas of Mewar, the senior royal house of Rajputana, descended from the Sun-dynasty rulers traceable in continuous line to the seventh century. Construction was begun under Maharana Sajjan Shambhu Singh (reigned 1874–1884) and finished under his successor Maharana Fateh Singh in the opening decade of the twentieth century. The building was used as the royal guesthouse for visiting royalty and heads of state — the British Royal Family, European royal houses, and Indian princes among them — through the first half of the twentieth century, and was opened as a hotel after a four-year conversion programme in 1982 under HRH (Historic Resort Hotels) — the hospitality arm of the Mewar royal family established by Maharana Bhagwat Singh and continued under Maharana Arvind Singh and now Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar.

The architecture is the brilliant white marble crescent that closes the southern end of the City Palace complex on the lakefront — three storeys arranged around a central octagonal swimming pool, with arched verandas, jali screens, fretwork balconies, and the pale Mewar marble that the family quarried from the Aravalli range for almost every Mewar palace. The 36 rooms and suites are individually designed across four categories: Palace Rooms, Terrace Suites, Royal Suites, and the four Imperial Suites. Each suite contains original Mewar-family furniture and portraits — the rooms have the genuine, slightly-crowded, antique-furnished feel of a working aristocratic house rather than a curated heritage-hotel set-piece. The Imperial Suites are the headline categories — multi-room, with private terraces overlooking Lake Pichola or the inner palace courtyards.

The food-and-beverage programme runs across two principal rooms, both inside the palace complex itself. Paantya is the all-day Indian and continental restaurant with a working Mewari kitchen — laal maas, safed maas, gatte ki sabji, dal baati, the regional menu that is one of India's most distinctive royal cuisines. Bar Panghat is the historic palace cocktail bar with the Mewar-family photograph collection on the walls. The central octagonal pool is a marble courtyard pool with poolside dining and the property's most-photographed setting after the Imperial Suite terraces. The J Wellness Circle spa programme — shared with Fateh Prakash Palace next door — runs eight treatment rooms with Ayurvedic and contemporary therapies.

The structural advantage of Shiv Niwas over the Lake Palace and the Oberoi Udaivilas is location: Shiv Niwas is the only luxury hotel actually inside the working Mewar City Palace complex, with an internal connection to the City Palace museum, a five-minute walk to the Crystal Gallery and Durbar Hall, and a private ghat on Lake Pichola for the hotel's boats. The trade-off is that the rooms are smaller and more antique-furnished than at the contemporary five-star alternatives — book the Imperial Suite for the full experience, or accept a Palace Room as a way of staying inside the palace at the entry-level price point. The HRH service register is family-house attentive rather than international-five-star slick — for travellers wanting authentic Mewar context the Shiv Niwas is the answer; for travellers wanting current-decade hotel-product polish the Oberoi or the Leela are stronger.

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