Kismet

Houses with a story

Where the building is the story

Each of these buildings carries a history, and you sleep inside it.

A royal residence the family still lives in, a marble palace reached only by boat, a palazzo on the Grand Canal, a harbour front open since 1903, and the pavilions that began Aman. What you feel in each is the building's own plan: corridors built for a household, ceilings sized for a durbar, a water gate where a front door should be.

Say when you book that the building is the reason you are coming. At Umaid Bhawan and Rambagh the house keeps its own historian, and the concierge will ask for a walk of the palace while you are there.

6 houses

Umaid Bhawan Palace at blue hour, two hundred metres of sandstone front lit gold beneath its dome and the lawn running straight up to the steps.
At blue hour, 200 metres of sandstone front lit gold under the dome, and the lawn running straight up to the steps.Pictured · Umaid Bhawan Palace
The estate from the air at sunset, sunbeams breaking over the dome, rows of bougainvillea laid out below and the pool at the bottom of the garden.

Jodhpur

Umaid Bhawan Palace

Golden sandstone on a hill above the blue city, 347 rooms of it.

It was begun in 1929 as famine relief — 3,000 men on the payroll for 15 years, cutting blocks that interlock without mortar — and finished in 1943. The interiors ordered from London went down with the ship carrying them, so a Polish painter, Stefan Norblin, spent 3 years covering the walls instead: peacocks, hunting scenes, the Ramayana, in a green-and-gold Art Deco one man invented in one building. The Zodiac Pool is underneath the palace, an Art Deco chamber painted as an ocean and lit from below. His Highness Gaj Singh II and his family live in their own wing and always have.

The story
A dome 45 metres over the middle of it, and a gilded star set into the floor beneath.
The house in full →
Rambagh's arcaded west wing at blue hour, domed chhatris and latticed balconies lit from within, a flight of stone steps dropping to the darkening lawn.

Jaipur

Rambagh Palace

A durbar could be called at any hour, and nothing in the building would have to change.

For 200 years Rambagh was the home of the Maharaja of Jaipur, and the marble corridors, the cusped verandahs and the 47 acres of Mughal garden are his. The historical suites look out across the formal gardens, and at dusk the peacocks come down onto the lawns. High tea on the Verandah is taken the way the Maharani took hers, with a string of classical musicians somewhere out of sight.

The story
The old royal banquet hall still serves the court's own recipes, under a ceiling of gold leaf and crystal.
The house in full →
A low-lit lounge after dark: cream tub chairs with magenta cushions on a patterned rug, a gold relief curling across a claret wall, and tall lamps in woven shades throwing light up the panelling.

Mumbai

The Taj Mahal Palace

Open since 1903, and it has never once behaved as though it needed to prove anything.

Through the doors the noise of Colaba stops, and what replaces it is marble, the smell of tuberose, and a cantilevered staircase climbing 4 floors with nothing visible holding it up. The Palace wing rooms face the harbour or the courtyard, and at about 6 the light comes off the Arabian Sea and turns the whole room the colour of weak tea. The Harbour Bar holds the city's first liquor licence and behaves accordingly. Afternoon tea in the Sea Lounge is taken at a window onto the Gateway.

The story
The Gateway of India was built across the road 21 years after the palace opened.
The house in full →
A gilded ballroom at Aman Venice, candle chandelier lit under a frescoed arch, floor-to-ceiling windows open onto the Grand Canal and the palazzos on the far bank.

Venice

Aman Venice

A 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal, with Tiepolo's frescoes over one of the beds.

The Palazzo Papadopoli is one of 8 monumental palazzos still standing on the waterway, and a boat brings most guests straight to the water gate. Jean-Michel Gathy set a contemporary hand against the Rococo frescoes, hand-painted silk and gilded stucco the palazzo has carried since it was a private residence. Alcova Tiepolo Suite is 103 square metres, wrapped in the 18th-century frescoes Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted directly onto its own ceiling. Behind the water gate are 2 private gardens, rare in a city built on canals rather than lawns.

The story
The bar sits in the Red Room, once the Salone Galleria, under a fresco by Cesare Rotta.
The house in full →
The black-tiled main pool at Amanpuri lying dead still between two rows of coconut palms, timber salas along both sides and one figure standing at the far lip where the water meets the Andaman Sea.

Phuket

Amanpuri

Aman began here, in a coconut plantation, in 1988.

Ed Tuttle drew it and it has not needed changing since. Pointed Ayutthaya gables in dark timber stand on posts, joined by raised walkways through a plantation the pavilions were built inside rather than cleared for, which is why they sit where they do. A pavilion is one room of 50 square metres, and it is the same 50 square metres whichever you book; what changes is entirely outside. Below the pool a broad flight of stone steps runs down the hillside to Pansea Beach.

The story
The wellness centre here has been running since long before wellness was a category.
The house in full →
3 carved marble chhatris lit from within at dusk, candles set out along a black-and-white checkered terrace at the water's edge.

Udaipur

Taj Lake Palace

White marble in the middle of Lake Pichola, with no road to it.

There is no road, so every arrival is by the palace's own boat. The building was never designed to hold 83 rooms, so no two of them sit the same way; almost all are on the piano nobile, with arched windows onto the lake. Neel Kamal serves dinner only, looking onto the lily pond, and cooks the royal food of Udaipur. Bhairo is the roof, open to the sky.

The story
The spa's treatment table is on a restored royal barge, the Kalpavriksha, and the therapist works while it crosses the lake.
The house in full →

Tell the concierge which part of the building you want to see, and they will ask the house before you arrive.

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