Friday 3 June 2016

Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace in Bangalore

Tipu Sultan's summer palace is located close to the bustling K.R. Market in the centre of Bangalore city. The palace is actually quiet small compared to other palaces in South India and is build within the walls of the Bangalore Fort.
Tipu Sultan Summer Palace Bangalore
The interiors of the palace was constructed with Teak wood with with ornate patterns painted  on the walls and wood carving on the many pillars. Most of the paint has worn of due to lack on maintenance as you can see from my images. 
Tipu used to stay at the palace during the summer months and hold court or durbar . Tipu Sultan used to address his subjects from the small balcony on the upper floor and the audience would be seated in the open hall down below .
Tipu Sultan Summer Palace Bangalore
Since the palace was mostly used in summer the architecture has been designed to have a lot of cross ventilation with lot of windows, high ceilings and tall beams .


Tipu Sultan Summer Palace Bangalore


Tipu Sultan Summer Palace Bangalore

There is a small museum on the ground floor of the palace where some weapons, painting and sculptures have been displayed. The most interesting of these was a rocket that was developed to be used in battle. I also found out from wikipedia that Mysorean rockets were the first iron-cased rockets successfully deployed for military use, pretty impressive !
Tipu Sultan Summer Palace Bangalore

Next to the Summer Palace I spotted very interesting building the Minto Eye Hospital. The architecture looked colonial and took a couple of photos of it ; once I got back home and searched on google found some interesting facts. The Minto Eye hospital was constructed in 1903 making it one of the oldest eye hospitals in the world !
The summer palace is open from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm every day of the week and it may take you about a hour to cover the entire palace. Make sure to visit Bangalore Fort as well, its walking distance away and if you are into street photography hit the KR Market and flower market.