Rajmahal Palace

In 1962, Gayatri Devi ran for Parliament representing Jaipur and won with 192,909 votes out of 246,516 cast- a Guinness World Record for the largest electoral victory margin at the time.

Photographer Cecil Beaton had once named her one of the ten most beautiful women in the world, but she insisted she never felt beautiful and frankly had more important things to do. She founded three schools, including the progressive Maharani Gayatri Devi Public School for girls, championed education reform, and became one of India’s most visible political figures during a turbulent post-independence era. When her husband Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II died suddenly in 1970, the family converted their primary residence, Rambagh Palace, into a luxury hotel and moved into the more intimate Rajmahal Palace.

Intimate being relative- the palace had already hosted Queen Elizabeth II (who stayed in a suite still bearing her name), Jackie Kennedy, the Shah of Iran, and Lord and Lady Mountbatten. Built in 1729 by Sawai Jai Singh II as a garden retreat for his wife Chandra Kanwar Ranawat, daughter of the Maharana of Mewar, Rajmahal Palace became something entirely different in Gayatri Devi’s hands: a working residence where one of India’s most glamorous women conducted the unglamorous business of politics, education reform, and preserving a vanishing world.

The palace’s frescoed walls and delicate jharokhas frame courtyards where polo-playing maharajas once entertained heads of state. A classic 1950s Ford Thunderbird still sits on the grounds alongside generations of polo trophies. In 2009, the family opened 14 suites to guests- no two alike. The royals still live upstairs, quietly keeping an eye on the place, just as they have for nearly three centuries.