Makarpura Palace

Makarpura Palace sits on a manicured ridge in Vadodara’s Makarpura suburb, a relic of Maharaja Khende Rao’s 1870 attempt to import Italianate grandeur into Gujarat. The two‑storey, colonnaded façade is surprisingly intact, though the original frescoes have faded into a somnolent beige and the once‑glittering chandeliers now lamp the Indian Air Force No 17 Tetra School’s drill hall, not a dignitary’s soirée. Visitors can glimpse the grand staircase and a few marble arches from the public side of the gated compound, but beyond the wrought‑iron gate the interior is off‑limits to civilians, a fact the palace’s own signage makes painfully clear. The best way to experience it is a brief detour after a morning in the lively Vadodara Museum and Mahatma Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram, stopping for a quick chai at the nearby State Bank Road stall before the afternoon heat drives you back into the city. Skip the otherwise advertised “guided tours” – they are merely perfunctory walks for school cadets and add no insight. The palace’s only real virtue is its setting: a quiet, tree‑lined avenue that offers a rare glimpse of colonial ambition colliding with post‑independence militarisation. Two hours in the afternoon, camera in hand, is all you need; any longer feels like an exercise in patience. November to February offers tolerable temperatures; monsoon drizzles make the stone slick and the surrounding fields muddy, so avoid June‑September. Accommodation in Vadodara’s Heritage‑Park or a boutique guesthouse on Fatehabad Road keeps you within a short rickshaw ride, and you’ll be close enough to catch the sunset over the palace’s red‑brick roof before it disappears behind the training aircraft on the runway.

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