Construction
Royal Palace of Peshwas
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Shaniwar Wada is a historical fortification in the city of Pune, India. Built in 1732, it was the seat of the Peshwas of the Maratha Confederacy until 1818. The fort itself was largely destroyed in 1828 by an unexplained fire, but the surviving structures are now maintained as a tourist site.
The Shaniwar Wada was normally the seven-story capital building of the Peshwas of the Maratha Empire. It was supposed to be made entirely of stone. However, after the completion of the base floor or the first story, the people of Satara (the national capital) complained to the Chhatrapati Shahu saying that a stone monument can be sanctioned and built only by the Chhatrapati himself and not the Peshwas. Following this, an official letter was written to the Peshwas stating that the remaining building had to be made of brick and not stone.
By 1758, at least a thousand people lived in the fort. In 1773, Narayanrao, who was the tenth and ruling Peshwa then, was murdered by guards on orders of his uncle Raghunathrao and aunt Anandibai. A popular legend has it that Narayanrao's ghost still calls for help on full moon nights. Various people, working around the area, have allegedly reported the cries of "Kaka mala vachava" (Uncle, save me) by Narayanrao Peshwa after his death. The book, Assassination of the Peshwa, written in English and Marathi, covers this incident in detail.
In June 1818, the Peshwa, Bajirao II, abdicated his Gaadi (throne) to Sir John Malcolm of the British East India Company and went into political exile at Bithoor, near Kanpur in present-day Uttar Pradesh, India. On 27 February 1828, a great fire started inside the palace complex. The conflagration raged for seven days. Only the heavy granite ramparts, strong teak gateways and deep foundations and ruins of the buildings within the fort survived.
According to Haricharitramrutsagar, a biographical text of Bhagwan Swaminarayan, he had visited Shaniwarwada on the insistence of Bajirao II in 1799.
Peshwa Baji Rao I, prime minister to Chattrapati Shahu, laid the ceremonial foundation of his own residence on Saturday, 10 January 1730. It was named Shaniwar Wada from the Marathi words Shaniwar (Saturday) and Wada (a general term for any residence complex). Teak was imported from the jungles of Junnar, stone was brought from the nearby quarries of Chinchwad, and Lime (mineral) was brought from the lime-belts of Jejuri. Shaniwarwada was completed in 1732, at a total cost of Rs. 16,110, a very large sum at that time.
The opening ceremony was performed according to religious customs, on 22 January 1732, another Saturday chosen for being a particularly auspicious day.
Later the Peshwas made several additions, including the fortification walls, with bastions and gates; court halls and other buildings; fountains and reservoirs. Currently, the perimeter fortification wall has five gateways and nine bastion towers, enclosing a garden complex with the foundations of the original buildings. It is situated near the Mula-Mutha River, in Kasba Peth.
Shaniwar Wada has five gates:
The important buildings in the palace includes the Thorlya Rayancha Diwankhana (Marathi: the court reception hall of the eldest royal, meaning Baji Rao I), Naachacha Diwankhana (Dance Hall), and Juna Arsa Mahal (Old Mirror Hall).
Since the buildings were destroyed in the fire of 1828, only descriptions of the living areas of the fort are available. All the state halls in the buildings are said to have doorways with exquisitely carved teak arches, with ornamental teardrop teak pillars shaped like Suru (cypress tree) trunks supporting the ceilings, which were covered with beautiful teak tracery, carved creepers and flowers. Exquisite glass chandeliers hung from the ceilings. The floors were made of highly polished marble, arranged in a mosaic pattern and adorned with rich Persian rugs. The walls contained paintings with scenes from the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
The buildings are said to have been designed and constructed by well-known artisans, including Shivaram Krishna Khasgiwale, Devaji Sutar, Kondaji Sutar, Morarji Patharwat Bhojraja (an inlay-work expert from Jaipur) and Ragho (a painter).
It is said that the Shaniwarwada complex was seven storeys high. On the top floor was the residence of the Peshwa which was called Meghadambari. It is said that the spire of Jñāneśvar temple at Alandi, 17 km away, could be seen from there.
The complex had an impressive lotus-shaped fountain: the Hazari Karanje (Fountain of a thousand jets). It was constructed for the pleasure of the infant Peshwa Sawai Madhavrao. It was designed as a sixteen petal lotus; each petal had sixteen jets with an eighty-foot arch. It was the most complicated and intricate fountain of its time.
Shrimant Anandrao Rudrajirao Dhulap-More (an admiral of Maratha navy in 18th century) who visited the Shaniwarwada in 1791 described it as "very magnificent. A hundred dancers can dance here at a time. In one corner is a marble Ganapati statue and the palace is flanked by a fountain and a flower garden.".
Text from the Wikipedia article “Shaniwar Wada”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.