Rajasthan

Jaipur

Jaipur was founded in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, a Rajput king and serious amateur astronomer, who planned his "Pink City" on precise Vastu Shastra grid principles decades before European city planning caught up. The pink colour itself came later, the whole old city was painted terracotta pink in 1876 to welcome the Prince of Wales, and locals have kept up the tradition since. Jai Singh's own obsession with the stars produced the Jantar Mantar observatory, still capable of telling time to the second using nothing but stone and shadow.