Thursday, November 15, 2012

Touring Hawa Mahal, Jantar-Mantar, & Albert Hall

Jaipur is the largest city in Rajasthan and was built in the eighteenth century as India's first planned city. Currently, is is building a subway system.  Jaipur belongs to the tourist Golden Triangle of Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. It hosts several attractions like the City Palace, Govind Dev ji Temple, Vidhan Sabha, Birla Temple, several massive Rajput forts and so on.

Hawa Mahal (Palace of Breeze) is a five storey high red sandstone structure complete with over 950 windows, and it was built in 1799 as part of City Palace. It was an extension of the Zenana (women) chamber, to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life in the street below without being seen. The breeze circulates through these windows giving the palace its name. This demostrates a great injustice, the oppression of women globally. When women in developing countries have equal access to education and economic opportunity, all human resources can be fully deployed. Major challenges for achieving gender equality in India include persistent and endemic violence against women, widespread poverty, hunger and restricted access to resources for women.
      

Jantar Mantar is an UNESCO world heritage site, and it is the largest of five astronomical observatories build during the period 1727-1734 in north India. The observatory consists of fourteen major geometric devices (or yantras in Hindi) for measuring time, predicting eclipses, tracking stars in their orbits, ascertaining the declinations of planets and determining the celestial altitudes etc. There is signage providing elaborate explanations for the use of each device.

Central Museum (Albert Hall) is the oldest museum of the state and functions as the State museum of Rajasthan. The building is situated outside the city wall opposite New gate and was opened as public museum in 1887 and has a huge collection of miniature paintings, costumes, folk art, woodcarvings, portraits and jewelry from Jaipur royalty and Rajasthani tribesman alike.  It is named after Albert Edward, during whose visit to the city.

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