the rooms

33 m² · Second to fourth, Palace wing · Interior — no window view · sleeps 3

The cheapest way to sleep inside the 1903 building, and what it costs you is daylight: these are the Palace's interior rooms and they have no window. It is 33 square metres — the same as the Grande a rung above — with a king bed, a writing desk, a fan turning under the cornice, and a small alcove off the bedroom with two chairs in it. Everything in it is lamplight, and you will sleep better than you have in a year.

33 m² · Mid-level floors, Palace wing · The Arabian Sea view · sleeps 3

It is 33 square metres on the mid floors of the Palace wing, and one thing decides it: the bay is a small room of its own. An arched opening off the bedroom, painted a colour the bedroom is not, a glass lantern hung at the centre of it, two chairs and a round table, and windows on 3 sides with the Arabian Sea behind them. The same floor area as the city-view room a rung below. Only the water changes.

37 m² · Club floors, Palace wing · City view · sleeps 2

It is 4 square metres more than the rooms below, on the high floors of the heritage wing, with a lounge at the end of the corridor. The Taj Club here is not the usual airport-lounge arrangement dropped into a hotel — it is a set of rooms in the 1903 building with a view down onto the Gateway, and breakfast in it is why people book this room a second time. Two guests only: the club rooms do not take a third bed.

37 m² · Club floors, Palace wing · Arabian Sea and the Gateway of India view · sleeps 2

The same club room turned through 90 degrees, and the 90 degrees is what you are paying for: the Gateway directly below, the harbour past it, and the light coming off the water into the room from about 4 in the afternoon. This is the photograph people have in mind when they book this hotel. It is worth knowing that the room is the same 37 square metres as the city-view club room, and not a metre more.

83 m² · Second to fifth, Palace wing · City view · sleeps 3

The first suite with a door between the sitting room and the bed, and in a building this old that door is worth more than the metres. It is 83 square metres of the original house: panelled walls, a chandelier that is not a reproduction, and furniture that has been repaired rather than replaced. It faces the city. Take it if you want to live inside the building rather than look at the harbour from it.

70 m² · Palace wing · City view · sleeps 3

It is 70 square metres, and the smallest room in it is the reason to take it. The dining alcove is lacquered flat chrome yellow to the cornice, with a white jali screen filling one wall and a glass chandelier over a round table for 4 — a room to hold a breakfast in with the bedroom door shut. A sitting room, a bedroom, heritage décor, downtown Mumbai in the windows, and the Taj Club lounge from 7 in the morning until a quarter to midnight.

121 m² · First to fifth · Arabian Sea view · sleeps 4 + 1 child

The 1903 building at its least restrained: dark mahogany panelling, a claret silk bedspread, a violet velvet armchair at the window, and one of the hotel's own domes on the skyline outside it. It is 121 square metres with a separate sitting room and a butler by default. The corridors are long and the floors uneven in places — that is the building, not a fault.

121 m² · Palace wing · Harbour or the Gateway view · sleeps 3 + 1 child

Each of these is a different room, and which one you get is decided on the day: the Rajput, hung with Rajasthani miniatures; the Bell Tower Duplex, which runs over two floors inside the tower and has its own staircase; the Ravi Shankar, named for the man who stayed in it. What they share is that each was designed once, for itself, and none has been standardised since. Tell the concierge which you would like and they will tell you honestly whether it is free.

465 m² · Palace wing · The Gateway of India and the harbour view · sleeps 4

Named for the family that built the hotel, and the only room here that is genuinely a residence: 465 square metres, a drawing room that seats 20, a dining room that seats 12, two bedrooms, a private gym, and windows along the whole harbour front with the Gateway directly beneath them. It is let perhaps 100 nights a year, and what it costs is a conversation with the concierge rather than a number on a page.