Mysore Palace, also known as Amba Vilas Palace, is a historic palace and royal residence located in Mysore, Karnataka, India. It served as the official residence of the Wadiyar dynasty and the seat of the Kingdom of Mysore, and was commissioned by Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV in August 1897 following the destruction of the previous structure in a fire. The design of the palace is attributed to Henry Irwin, a British architect who had earlier designed the Madras High Court, and Edwin Wolleston Fritchley, who would later design the Lalitha Mahal. Construction of the current structure began in 1897 and was completed in 1912. It is one of the largest palaces in India, and is a prominent example of Indo-Saracenic architecture, combining Indo-Islamic, Rajput, Hoysala and Gothic architectural styles.
The land on which the palace now stands was recorded as the site of a small fort in the late 14th century. The first palace to occupy the location was built in the 17th century during the reign of Kanthirava Narasaraja I, and was destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. Since the early 19th century, the Mysore Dasara festival has been annually held on the palace grounds, culminating in an elephant procession on Vijayadashami. In 1998, the Karnataka state government enacted the Mysore Palace Acquisition Act, acquiring ownership of the palace from the Wadiyar family; the act was subsequently challenged in court, and is the subject of an ongoing legal dispute.
The main palace houses a public museum alongside the living quarters of Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, the current ceremonial head of the Wadiyar dynasty. In addition to the palace, the overall complex encompasses multiple gardens, several Hindu temples (some of which predate the current palace itself), and the old walls of the original fort. As of 2024, Mysore Palace is one of the most famous tourist attractions in India, with more than four million annual visitors.
Etymology
The name Amba Vilas is of Sanskrit origin. Ambā (lit. "mother") is an epithet for the Hindu goddess Durga, who according to local legend slew the demon king Mahishasura atop the nearby Chamundi Hills. The word vilāsa (lit. "pleasure") refers to a residence of pleasure or luxury, and was commonly used to name palaces in India during British rule.
History Early history
In 1524, Chamaraja Wodeyar III, then a vassal of the Vijayanagara Empire, constructed a fort with earthen walls in the village of Puragere, the predecessor of Mysore. The first recorded mention of the palace dates from 1638, when Kanthirava Narasaraja I rebuilt the palace within the fort after it was destroyed by a lightning strike. During this time, Srirangapatna served as the de facto capital of the Kingdom of Mysore, and the palace was primarily used as a residence for the maharaja when he and his retinue would visit to worship at the nearby Chamundeshwari Temple.
By the time Tipu Sultan came to power as the Sultan of Mysore, the Mysore Palace and the surrounding town had fallen into a state of neglect. In 1793, Tipu demolished the palace and parts of the outer walls of the fort, and used the stones and materials to begin construction of a new fortress to the east named Nazarabad. Following Tipu's death at the Battle of Srirangapatna in 1799, the British installed five-year old Krishnaraja Wodeyar III on the throne and began to rebuild the palace at Mysore, a project that took four years to complete. The newly restored palace was built in a Hindu style of architecture, and was made primarily of wood. Upon its completion, Mysore became the capital of the Kingdom of Mysore. Krishnaraja held the first durbar (royal assembly) at the palace in 1805, during the month of Navaratri. The early years of Krishnaraja's reign saw a large influx of immigrants from modern-day Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra to the city of Mysore; by 1836, it was estimated that the Mysore Palace employed approximately 6,000 soldiers, Brahmins, servants, and other workers in various roles. It was further estimated that by the time Krishnaraja died in 1868, a total of 10,000 people (roughly one out of every six residents in Mysore) worked at the palace in some capacity.
Following Krishnaraja's death, the coronation ceremony of five-year old Chamarajendra Wadiyar X took place on September 23rd, 1868 in a pavilion erected within the inner courtyard of the palace. The ceremony was held during the seventh day of the Dasara festival, and was attended by Lewin Bowring, the Chief Commissioner of Mysore, alongside numerous Indian and European luminaries. In the following months, Bowring made several efforts to bring the palace and its administration further under British control, including reducing the number of administrative departments from 25 to twelve, seizing and destroying all the firearms within the palace, and curtailing most of the king's spending on charity and personal luxuries. Bowring also appointed Bengal Army officer George Malleson as the guardian of the young maharaja. Malleson proceeded to relocate Chamarajendra from the palace to Bangalore for schooling, over the objections of the late Krishnaraja's two queens, Ramavilasa and Sitavilasa, who unsuccessfully petitioned the Viceroy of India Edward Lytton to countermand the order.
After Chamarajendra's death in 1894, a marble statue of his likeness was sculpted by British sculptor William Robert Colton and placed at the north entrance to the palace in 1918. Subsequently, Bombay sculptor Ganpatrao K. Mahatre was commissioned to redo the head of the sculpture, in order to more accurately represent Chamarajendra's features; the modified sculpture was unveiled in 1920.
Destruction and reconstruction
On February 20th, 1897, the northern portion of Mysore Palace was largely destroyed by a ruinous fire just after the wedding ceremony of Jayalakshmi Ammanni, the maharaja-kumari (eldest princess) of Chamarajendra. The conflagration killed eight people and destroyed one-fifth of the building, including the durbar hall, the palace armory, the Sanskrit library, and the music room. Only the living quarters at the rear of the palace were left unscathed. Kempananjammanni Devi, who was ruling Mysore state as regent for the thirteen-year old Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV at the time of the incident, commissioned British architects Henry Irwin and E.W. Fritchley to build a new palace, and shifted the royal family to the nearby Jaganmohan Palace until construction was complete. Kempananjammani selected Irwin to build the palace after she was impressed by his Renaissance-inspired design of the Viceregal Lodge in Shimla, and paid him a fee of Rs 12,000 for his role as chief architect. The total cost of the project, initially projected at Rs 25,00,000, ultimately ballooned to an estimated Rs 41,47,913 (around million adjusted to inflation). In accordance with guidelines issued by the state government, the palace was primarily constructed of stone, brick and iron, with the use of inflammable materials kept to a minimum.
The Scottish traveler William Murdoch visited the palace in 1908 towards the final stages of construction, and described the intricate carvings of indigenous flora and fauna in marble, granite and teak as "out and away beyond anything we could almost dream of at home" in terms of technical skill. Murdoch noted that hundreds of carvers and thousands of masons were involved in the construction of the building, and that each was paid a fixed daily salary of 1s. 4d (roughly equivalent to 1 silver rupee at the time),Ambedkar, B. R. (1947) History of Indian Currency and Banking. Bombay: Thacker & Company Ltd., p. 250. describing it as "good pay here". Four years after Murdoch's visit, construction of the palace finished in 1912.
During the reconstruction of the palace, the outlying areas within the original fort complex also underwent significant changes. Prior to its destruction, the old palace had been surrounded by a dense urban center, with businesses, public offices, temples, and residential streets segregated by caste directly adjoining the main palace building. These buildings were cleared out of the complex and replaced with wide streets and large gardens, in an attempt to improve the appearance and cleanliness of the palace. Many of the former residents relocated to and settled in the newly-built suburbs outside of the complex, which maintained the religion and caste-based stratifications enforced in the old city.
The completed palace subsequently underwent a series of renovations in the early 1930s, during the reign of Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV. These restoration efforts included the enlargement of the old eastern-facing portico of the palace to accommodate the construction of a redesigned open-view durbar hall facing east, and the addition of multiple square towers at the northern and southern ends of the façade.
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, popularly known as the "Father of Modern Yoga", taught yoga in the palace during the 1920s at the request of Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV. Among his pupils there were B. K. S. Iyengar and K. Pattabhi Jois, the respective founders of Iyengar Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga. Krishnamacharya's teachings at the palace were likely influenced by the Sritattvanidhi, a 19th-century work attributed to Krishnaraja Wodeyar III that illustrated a series of 112 yoga postures. Krishnaraja's successor, Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar, did not share his uncle's interest in yoga, and the study and teaching of yoga at the palace largely waned in the 1940s.
Post-independence
On January 26th, 1950, following the Dominion of India's transition to a republic and the adoption of the Constitution of India, Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar read a proclamation in the Durbar Hall of the palace in which he formally ceded control of the Kingdom of Mysore to the newly-created Republic of India. Jayachamaraja was subsequently named the first Governor of Mysore State. In 1951 and 1953, he had two temples constructed on the palace grounds, the Bhuvaneshvari Temple and Gayatri Temple. In 1971, the title of Maharaja of Mysore was abolished after the passage of the 26th Amendment, and the two front floors of the palace became a museum open to the public.
In 2017, an electrical fire caused by faulty wiring within an ATM kiosk caused damage to the east gate of the palace.
On December 25, 2025, a gas cylinder filled with helium exploded on the palace grounds near the eastern gate during Christmas day celebrations, killing three people and injuring four others. The blast occurred at roughly 8:30 p.m. when a balloon salesman improperly added caustic soda to an aluminum cylinder while filling balloons, causing a chain reaction that led to the explosion. Following the incident, the use of helium gas to fill balloons in public places was prohibited by the city of Mysore.
Architecture
The palace is a three-story building, roughly in length and in width, chiefly constructed of red and grey-green granite. The defining structure of the palace is the five-story central tower, which culminates in a gold-plated onion-shaped dome characteristic of Mughal architecture. Instead of the typical finial, the main dome supports a smaller chhatri, a feature commonly seen in Rajasthani palaces. The main façade of the palace features a large central archway that forms the main entrance to the building, flanked by four smaller arches on each side supported by granite pillars. At both ends of the palace are three square towers, each five stories tall and topped with a pink marble dome and finial. A prominent sculpture of Gajalakshmi (a representation of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth) is fixed above the central arch. Designed by Henry Irwin, an English architect, the palace is a classic example of Indo-Saracenic architecture, with elements from Mughal, Rajput, Hoysala and Gothic architecture styles.