Sawai Man Singh Town Hall (Old Vidhan Sabha)

Set just inside the walled city near the Sireh Deori gate and the great forecourt of Jaleb Chowk, the Sawai Man Singh Town Hall — known to Jaipuris as the Purani Vidhan Sabha, the Old Assembly — is one of the pink city's quietest grand buildings.

• It was designed by Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob, the prolific engineer-architect behind Albert Hall and much of late-nineteenth-century Jaipur, and raised in the early 1880s in his signature Indo-Saracenic manner: arcaded verandahs, scalloped arches and a long, symmetrical elevation that reads as European civic architecture wearing Rajput dress.
• It opened around 1883 to house a large industrial exhibition, and that first purpose lingered in the building's name for years.
• Its second life is what most people remember.
• After the state of Rajasthan was formed, the hall was pressed into service as the seat of the Legislative Assembly, and from the early 1950s until 2000 the business of governing Rajasthan happened beneath its high ceilings.
• The final session was held here in November 2000, after which the Assembly moved to the modern Vidhan Bhavan on Lal Kothi.
• The town hall then fell largely silent — a monumental shell holding a great deal of political memory.
• Today the building sits at the centre of an ambitious plan: a full conservation and restoration programme is turning it into the proposed Rajasthan Heritage Museum, a large state museum meant to trace the region's art, craft and administration.
• That work has been slow and, importantly for travellers, the interior is not currently open to the public; ownership was also long contested in the courts.
• For now this is a place to appreciate from the outside — walk the surrounding lanes, take in the long facade, and treat it as a footnote to a City Palace morning rather than a ticketed attraction.
• Always check locally before you go.
• For the vegetarian traveller the setting could hardly be better.
• The town hall stands in the heart of Jaipur's old-city food country, where pure-vegetarian, eggless kitchens are the norm rather than the exception.
• Laxmi Misthan Bhandar (LMB) in Johari Bazaar, an explicitly eggless sweet house, is a short walk away for thalis, kachoris and ghee-rich mithai; the rooftop Ganesh Restaurant near New Gate and the halwai counters of Rawat Misthan Bhandar are close behind.
• Carry water, especially in summer, when the walled city bakes.
• Come in the cooler morning light, when the arcades catch the sun and the bazaars are just waking.
• Pair it with the City Palace, Jantar Mantar and Hawa Mahal, all within a few hundred metres, and you have a compact, richly historic walk on foot.