Google Maps went live on 8 February, 2005, but a Rajput king had planned an entire city around a grid 278 years earlier.
When Sawai Jai Singh II founded Jaipur in 1727, he laid out straight streets that crossed at right angles, divided the city into nine sectors and set standards for the height of its buildings and the width of its roads.
That plan still shapes the walled city today, and it began as the answer to a practical problem.
A hilltop capital running out of options
Before 1727, the Kachwaha rulers governed from Amer, a hilltop capital about nine kilometres northeast of the site that became Jaipur. Droughts and famines had made Amer unsustainable, and the ICOMOS evaluation prepared for UNESCO adds that a growing population, a lack of water and concerns over security all demanded attention in a new capital.
Jai Singh, who ruled from 1699 to 1744, chose a plain surrounded by mountains, an unusual decision in a region where cities typically grew organically on hills.
A scholar king and a Bengali planner
Jai Singh was a mathematician, architect and astronomer, and he consulted architectural books and architects while planning the city. UNESCO notes that he studied town plans sourced from across the globe. For the design itself, he turned to Vidyadhar Bhattacharya, a scholar from Bengal who worked as the king’s chief auditor.
The collaboration between Jai Singh II and Vidyadhar Bhattacharya brought together ideas from Indian architectural traditions and European mathematics, creating a distinctive approach to city planning. Photograph: (Talk to Iconic)
Bhattacharya referred to ancient Indian texts on astronomy as well as books by Ptolemy and Euclid, and the city’s grid draws inspiration from the Prastara plan of Vastu Shastra, a traditional Hindu system of architecture.
ICOMOS records that the plan reflects an interchange of ancient Hindu, Mughal and contemporary Western ideas, with a grid-iron layout familiar in the West and zoning drawn from Hindu concepts.
Nine sectors, three squares and uniform bazaars
The plan divides the city into nine sectors called chowkris, each measuring about 800 by 800 metres. Two sectors hold the palaces and state buildings, while the remaining seven serve the public. Straight main streets cross at three public squares called chaupars, and colonnaded shops line the bazaars.
The state itself built the main markets, shops, residences and temples along these streets, which gave the facades a uniform look, and the plan set specific standards for building heights and road widths. Underground canals and tanks supplied water to the new city, a priority for a court that had left Amer partly because of water shortages.
Jai Singh wanted Jaipur to thrive as a centre of commerce, and UNESCO records that he wrote personal letters to bankers and merchants, inviting them to settle with tax concessions and gifts of land for elegant courtyard houses.
Jaipur’s nine-sector layout was designed to do more than organise buildings. It brought administration, trade, public spaces and residential areas into a carefully coordinated urban system. Photograph: (Jaipur Beat)
Construction began in 1727, and the major palaces, roads and square took about four years to finish. Around 400 temples rose within the city, and local traditions of trade, craftsmanship and guilds have continued.
The city’s famous colour arrived later, when the lemon-coloured lime wash of its bazaars gave way in the 19th century to a wash the colour of red sandstone, which earned Jaipur the title of Pink City.
Jai Singh’s scientific interests also left a lasting mark, since the Jantar Mantar observatory, which UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2010, sits within the area nominated for World Heritage status.
300 years on, Jaipur still follows the same plan
In July 2019, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed Jaipur City, Rajasthan, on the World Heritage List, describing it as an exceptional example of indigenous city planning in South Asia.
The committee found that the walled city’s spatial organisation still reflects its 18th-century grid-iron plan, and that its gates, bazaars and public squares convey the city as it developed between the 18th and early 20th centuries.
The Pink City’s UNESCO recognition in 2019 acknowledged more than its architectural beauty. It celebrated an 18th-century approach to urban planning that continues to shape a living, evolving city. Photograph: (ResearchGate)
The modern city has grown well beyond the boundaries set in 1727, and ICOMOS warned in its 2019 evaluation that population pressure, unauthorised new construction and widespread encroachments on the surviving city wall threaten the historic fabric.
The grid itself remains mostly intact, and a plan drawn to solve a hilltop capital’s problems of crowding, water and security still anchors a working city of bazaars and crafts.
Jaipur looks like a grid, then, because several needs were met on one flat site. A king needed water, security and room for a growing population; a Bengali scholar consulted ancient Indian astronomy texts and the books of Ptolemy and Euclid; and a plain gave their straight lines space to run.
Nearly three centuries later, that combination still gives the Pink City its shape.
