Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace

The palace was built inside the walls of Bangalore Fort. Hyder Ali began it, and it was finished under his son, Tipu Sultan. The years it was begun and finished are disputed; both versions are set out below.

Confirmed·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (tertiary source)[1]·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace[4]·ASI name-board at the palace (photographed 2019)[5]

It is built of teak on a low stone platform, in two storeys. The teak shafts do not stand singly: they rise in clusters from shared stone bases, and the scalloped, or cusped, arches spring from their capitals.

Confirmed·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (tertiary source)[1]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

Colin Mackenzie, an army engineer who surveyed the fort in March 1791, labelled this building "Durbar, or Palace, of Tippoo Sultan", and marked "Water running round the Palace". Wikipedia reports the belief that Tipu held court from the balconies on the east and west sides of the upper floor.

Single source·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and petta of Bangalore, March 1791 (RCIN 735001)[6]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (tertiary source)[1]

On the ground floor, an open, shaded colonnade runs the length of the building, and the same arcade appears on both long fronts. Upstairs, galleries with turned-timber balustrades look down into the central hall. Some of its pillars run straight past the gallery to the flat timber ceiling, while the pillars at the gallery edge stop at the first floor. Stairs of stone treads set into the wall, with timber balustrades, lead up.

Confirmed·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]·Tipu Sultan's grandiose Bangalore Fort and Summer Palace (travel feature, 2019)[7]

The main front has five bays between six pillars. We counted this in six separate photographs. The front is not symmetrical: a narrow plain pier stands at one end and a solid two-storey block at the other.

Confirmed·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

It is lower than "two storeys" suggests. From photographs with people standing at the front of the colonnade, we estimate the arch tops at about 4.6 to 4.9 metres above the floor, the eaves at about 5.5 to 5.8 metres and the top of the pierced parapet at about 6.8 to 7.3 metres. They rest on an assumed human height.

Estimate·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

An early dated view of the inside also survives: the colonnade with figures, drawn by Robert Home and published in 1794.

Confirmed·Lieutenant James Hunter, Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, watercolour, 1792 (inscribed "A View of Tippoos Palace at Bangalore Feby. 92.")[3]·Robert Home, Inside View of the Palace at Bangalore, 1794[8]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

The building still stands. It is a protected monument of national importance, maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

Confirmed·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (Q7809034): heritage designation[9]·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (tertiary source)[1]·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace[4]

The teak pillars, arches, galleries and balconies survive. Today the shafts are dark polished timber with pale capitals and lotus-collar bases. A balcony photographed close up sits on carved timber brackets, with a front of turned balusters under a cusped arch.

Confirmed·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

Inside, parts of the wall painting survive: a brick-red ground covered in a pale floral pattern, bordered by a frieze of gold flowers and leaves on white, with fine black outlining.

Confirmed·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (tertiary source)[1]

The ground-floor rooms have been turned into a small museum, and the enclosed block at the south-south-west end now holds its gallery.

Confirmed·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (tertiary source)[1]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

The outside colour is gone. Hunter's watercolour, inscribed "A View of Tippoos Palace at Bangalore Feby. 92.", was made eleven months after the fort fell. It shows pale walls carrying a blue-green trellis below and scattered blue-green sprigs above; arches outlined in salmon-red with an ochre inner line; shafts fluted alternately green and gold; gold capitals with red details; red bases; an ochre-and-red gallery balustrade; and a white pierced parapet along the roof.

Confirmed·Lieutenant James Hunter, Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, watercolour, 1792 (inscribed "A View of Tippoos Palace at Bangalore Feby. 92.")[3]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

Hunter's sheet records one outside face in 1792, not the rooms. The red interior and the pale exterior are two schemes on two surfaces, not a conflict between sources.

Confirmed·Lieutenant James Hunter, Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, watercolour, 1792 (inscribed "A View of Tippoos Palace at Bangalore Feby. 92.")[3]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

Most of the interior painting is gone. The surviving fragments show the style (red ground, pale floral field, gold border, black outline) but not what was painted where. No source we could reach, from the period or since, records the painting room by room.

Not recorded·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

In the Epocheye app the palace opens as a 3D reconstruction on the phone screen. You look around by moving the phone, tap to jump between set standing points, and can walk the ground colonnade, the stairs and the first-floor gallery with an on-screen control. It can be opened away from the site.

Confirmed·Epocheye app: palace reconstruction, placards and narration[10]

The shape comes from the standing building: the five-bay front, the clustered pillars, the galleries and the full-height hall. Lengths and heights are our estimates scaled from photographs, because no survey has been published.

Estimate·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]·Epocheye app: palace reconstruction, placards and narration[10]

The outside colonnade is painted as Hunter recorded it in February 1792, and the inside walls carry the red-ground floral style of the surviving fragments. Because no record says what was painted in each room, the pattern on the walls and ceilings follows the style of the Daria Daulat Bagh at Srirangapatna, another palace of Tipu Sultan's whose wall paintings survive. It is a reconstruction of the style, not a copy of these rooms.

Estimate·Lieutenant James Hunter, Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, watercolour, 1792 (inscribed "A View of Tippoos Palace at Bangalore Feby. 92.")[3]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]·Daria Daulat Bagh (tertiary source)[11]·Epocheye app: palace reconstruction, placards and narration[10]

Figures of the period stand in the reconstruction, including Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan and his finance minister Purnaiah. They are depictions drawn from period portraits and paintings, not likenesses. The app says so once, at the start of the tour, and says that its storytelling is generated by AI.

Confirmed·Epocheye app: palace reconstruction, placards and narration[10]

Boards placed inside the reconstruction explain the building as you walk, and a guided narration is recorded in English and Hindi. The tiger throne in the hall is the one object the app itself calls an imagining rather than a reconstruction: it never stood in this building. The boards do not mark which details are estimates; this page sets out that evidence.

Confirmed·Epocheye app: palace reconstruction, placards and narration[10]

The construction dates are disputed. The ASI's name-board at the site gives 1778 to 1789. Wikipedia and most secondary sources say Hyder Ali began the palace in 1781 and Tipu Sultan completed it in 1791; the Karnataka government's Bengaluru Urban district site also gives 1791 for its completion. This page does not choose between them.

Disputed·ASI name-board at the palace (photographed 2019)[5]·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (tertiary source)[1]·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace[4]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]

On either chronology, Hyder Ali did not see it finished: he died in December 1782.

Confirmed·Hyder Ali (tertiary source)[12]·ASI name-board at the palace (photographed 2019)[5]·Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace (tertiary source)[1]

The Epocheye app's narration and boards follow the 1781 to 1791 dates. The ASI's board at the site gives different years.

Disputed·Epocheye app: palace reconstruction, placards and narration[10]·ASI name-board at the palace (photographed 2019)[5]

Published descriptions, such as a 2019 Onmanorama travel feature, give the palace around a hundred and sixty pillars. We have not counted them, and no source we could reach lists them rank by rank. The pillar grid in photographs is consistent with it, but it remains a reported number.

Disputed·Tipu Sultan's grandiose Bangalore Fort and Summer Palace (travel feature, 2019)[7]·Palace measurements and evidence file[2]