In a city of storied palaces, Fairmont Udaipur Palace stands apart with monumental architecture, artisan-crafted details and a fresh vision of modern royal hospitality
Udaipur, the city in Rajasthan, India, has no dearth of palaces, old and new, most of them gazing across shimmering lakes. These are the palaces that provided the backdrop for Hollywood’s James Bond in Octopussy in 1983, hosted Queen Elizabeth II during her visit in the 1960s, and, more recently, played host to pop star Jennifer Lopez at a high-end Indian wedding.
Against this lineage of palatial glamour, how does yet another palace hotel claim distinction?
Fairmont Udaipur Palace asserts its position through a combination of scale, spatial zoning, and an ancient architectural language revised for contemporary well-heeled travellers.
As you approach via carved pathways through the Aravalli range, among the world's oldest mountain ranges, the first impression of Fairmont Udaipur Palace is one of scale.
For David Chambers, the principal architect of the Smallwood design firm, the challenge was the sheer ambition of the brief. They had previously worked on projects such as Four Seasons Doha and Conrad Dubai.
On the 18 acres of undulating terrain of the masterplan, they had to accommodate monumental venues, including large lobbies, domes, colonnades, and one of Rajasthan’s largest ballrooms, while also delivering 327 guestrooms distributed across the site in calibrated clusters.
The hill drive culminates at the Panther Patio. Panthers are the mascot of the palace and recur as mosaics, painted art, sculpture, bar accessories, and wallpapers. Beyond symbolism, the surrounding hills are also home to odd 40 of them.
From the arrival point, the scale gradually shifts to a more human register. Fairmont Udaipur Palace makes its greatest challenge, the topography, its strength and a defining design strategy. The palace is composed of a sequence of stacked and proportioned building masses.
The master plan is further articulated horizontally into three wings, each conceptualised as an ode to the forces of nature. The Chandra Mahal draws inspiration from the moon, the Surya Mahal from the sun, and the Agni Mahal from fire. This zoning gives each wing its own identity and allows one to notice the grandiosity of architecture and intricacy of detailing, one level and one area at a time.
According to architect Jeffrey A. Wilkes of Designwilkes, who took up the interior of the palace, “The intention was to frame cultural elements in a modern light, offering moments of discovery that feel both rooted and visionary.”
The architectural vocabulary is a mishmash of Indo-Islamic elements, ubiquitous in most medieval monuments of Rajasthan. The elevated, fortress-like stance harks back to the 6th-century Chittorgarh Hill Fort. The textured stone façades and ceremonial gateways take cues from the nearby 15th-century Kumbhalgarh fort, both about 100 kms from the property.
“We wanted a place that catered to luxury travellers looking for a modern palace,” say Somesh and Swati Agarwal, Directors of Rockwood Hotels and Keystone Hotels.
With two swimming pools, pickle and paddle courts, mini golf, eight on-site restaurants, and a wellness sanctuary, this is not just for modern royalty but also their entourage.
Fairmont Udaipur Palace is the place you'd want to bring your family for a vacation.
Once you take the elevator up to the central lobby, rather than the dark, weighty colour palette one might expect from palatial aesthetics, it is the lightness, airiness, and openness of the space that takes you by surprise. Instead of looking defensibly inward like ancient palaces, Fairmont Udaipur Palace looks out in every direction. After all, it has a flaunt-worthy view.
A huge glass atrium inspired by the Louvre Museum in Paris, but semi-circular in form, filters winter sun. The colour scheme is white, powder blue, and taupe. Panoramic windows stretch across the other end, and the framed Aravalli mountains become a full-scale work of art in the background. Another 19th-century palace, Sajjan Garh Fort, an erstwhile hunting lodge for the maharajas, serves as the focal point of the distant view.
Across the property, blocks are stitched together through courtyards, pavilions, and manicured gardens, designed by Joel Beruga of Beruga Farnell as landscape architects.
At the main pool, the elements of nature converge: water, earth, air, sky, and fire from flambeau torches, which light up the pool after sunset.
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“I have always felt that larger resorts and hotels risk losing the sense of intimate luxury of a boutique hotel, its intricacy, detailing, and personalisation. With Fairmont Udaipur, we wanted to bring boutique-level detailing scaled up to 327 rooms and 18 acres,” says Swati.
An entire village of stone craft stalwarts hand-carved the 550 marble columns used in the hotel. All the artwork, soft furnishings, and even cutlery are created bespoke for the hotel and commissioned to local artisans.
Deep blue thikri (mirror inlay) panels, line corridors and courtyards alongside embroidered portières and mosaic murals. But perhaps the most important design element of the property is the marble flooring and the sheer number of patterns, types, and textures, diamonds, chevrons, borders within borders, and mosaic inlays, beckoning a Rajasthani version of Italian pietra dura (stone inlays).
You'll clock an extra thought process in the placement of furniture. It invites one to sit and let the eye wander towards the detailing. A large swing beneath the dome of the lobby, where guests can recline and get swallowed by the gigantic 50-foot radii of frescoed indigo and lapis art, punctuated by gold. A huge Edwardian crystal chandelier hangs over a star-shaped marble fountain. Turn either way, and there are hand-carved marble pillars and scalloped arches.
It's like a treasure hunt if you have a detail-oriented mind. While you soak in the sun poolside, the umbrella’s motifs are leopard print in fuchsia. When you sit on the couch in your Fairmont suite, hand-embroidered cushions and mirror-inlay walls display Rajput motifs. When you sip your welcome drink at the Panther Patio, you can’t help but notice the modern take on age-old pichwai paintings, a traditional Indian art form. As opposed to the Hindu god Krishna surrounded by cows, this version has leopards all around him. There’s a certain fearlessness in reworking what generations of eyes in Rajasthan have grown used to seeing.
