Maratha palace.

Two kilometres east of the Big Temple, behind a high wall and an unprepossessing ticket gate, is the Thanjavur palace — a sprawling sixteenth-century compound that the Nayaks began and the Marathas finished. It is the second most important monument in the city, and the one most often missed by visitors who go to Thanjavur for a day and stop at the temple.

The compound holds five distinct attractions — durbar hall, bell tower, art gallery, bronze gallery, and the Saraswathi Mahal Library museum — each ticketed under a single palace pass and each worth a separate visit. Allow at least three hours; allow five if you want to read the inscriptions and the labels properly.

A brief history.

The Nayaks of Thanjavur — a Telugu warrior dynasty that took the city from the Pandyas in the late sixteenth century — built the original palace as a fortified administrative compound. After 1674, when the Marathas under Venkoji took the city, the compound was extended on three sides and reconfigured for a different kind of court. The Maratha additions are the more elaborate parts; the Nayak core is the older and simpler.

The compound was the seat of administration under the Nayaks (1532–1674), the Marathas (1674–1855), and then, after the dynasty was dissolved by the British in 1855, of the district collectorate. Today it is administered partly by the Tamil Nadu state department of archaeology and partly by descendants of the Maratha royal family, who maintain a residential wing not open to the public.

The durbar hall.

The headline attraction. A long, columned hall with a painted timber ceiling, lacquered capitals, and a raised throne dais at the eastern end. The room was the audience chamber of the Maratha kings; the paintings on the columns and ceiling were commissioned during the reign of Serfoji II, and the throne dais survives intact. The acoustics are excellent — try a quiet word from one end and hear it at the other.

The bell tower.

A square brick-and-stucco tower in the centre of the compound, perhaps thirty metres tall, with a steep internal staircase and a small bell at the top. The bell was the call to court under the Marathas. The view from the upper landings is the only elevated panorama of Thanjavur — the temple complex due west, the river to the north, and on a clear morning the line of palms along the Kaveri delta to the south.

The art gallery.

Upstairs from the durbar hall, the palace art gallery holds a mixed collection — Maratha-era portraits of the kings, a small set of Thanjavur paintings, eighteenth-century maps, ceremonial weapons, and the standard nineteenth-century photographs of the royal family in durbar. The lighting is poor and the labelling sparse. The Thanjavur paintings on the south wall are the section worth lingering over.

The bronze gallery.

Operated separately by the Tamil Nadu Department of Museums, the bronze gallery is the largest collection of Chola bronzes outside the Government Museum at Chennai. Roughly two hundred and fifty pieces, dating from the ninth to the twelfth century, including a celebrated tenth-century Nataraja — Shiva as cosmic dancer, cast by the lost-wax method — and several refined Parvatis. The room is small, the lighting compromised; the work is not.

The Nataraja in the central case is one of the finest extant examples of the form. The bronze was probably cast at a Chola workshop in the lower Kaveri delta between 950 and 1000 CE — that is, before the Big Temple was built. The piece survived because it was carried in procession during religious festivals and never lost in the way that fixed stone sculptures sometimes were.

The library wing.

The Saraswathi Mahal Library occupies a quiet wing on the southern side of the compound. Forty-nine thousand manuscripts, a public museum of rotating displays, and a working research collection that admits accredited scholars. See our dedicated guide for the details.

How to visit.

The palace is open daily 09:00–17:30 with a midday closure 13:00–14:00. A single ticket admits to all five sections. Photography is permitted in the durbar hall, the bell tower and the art gallery; flash is discouraged in the bronze gallery and prohibited in the manuscript displays. Allow three to five hours.

The compound is two kilometres east of the Big Temple — fifteen minutes by tuk-tuk, half an hour on foot through the bazaar quarter. The best time to visit is between the dawn temple session and the midday closure, or between the late afternoon reopening and the evening temple session. Either bracket pairs the two monuments without rushing.