Brijrama Palace (Darbhanga Palace)

Rising in tiers of honey-toned Chunar sandstone directly above the water at Darbhanga Ghat, Brijrama Palace is one of the most photographed façades on the Varanasi riverfront.

• It was raised in 1812 by Shridhar Narayan Munshi, a finance minister to the Nagpur estate, and the ghat beneath it still carries his name as Munshi Ghat.
• A century later, in 1915, the Brahmin ruling house of Darbhanga in Bihar — under Maharaja Rameshwar Singh Bahadur — acquired and grandly extended the mansion, adding an upper storey and a hand-operated lift that is often cited as one of the earliest in the region; from then the landing came to be known as Darbhanga Ghat.
• The palace fuses the fort-like vocabulary of Maratha builders — heavy carved stone brackets, pointed arches, narrow balconies and semi-circular bastions or 'burj' — with the porches and slender Greco-Roman-style pillars that made this stretch of ghat architecturally the finest in the city.
• Step back on a boat and the palace reads like a layered stone screen against the sky, its colonnades catching the first pink light of sunrise.
• Inside — now a meticulously restored private heritage property, conserved over nearly two decades with guidance from INTACH — survive low-lintel doorways, delicate thikri (glass-inlay mirror) work, eighteenth-century frescoes and life-sized wooden figures.
• Because the interior operates as a heritage hotel rather than a ticketed monument, most travellers experience Brijrama from the outside: from the Ganga itself on a rowed or shared boat, or by walking the embankment from Dashashwamedh Ghat, roughly 300 metres to the north.
• This is a landmark to look at and photograph, not a museum to tour, and that is precisely how the ghat community has always encountered it.
• The surrounding ghats hum with the timeless rhythm of Kashi — bathers, priests under bamboo umbrellas, drifting marigold diyas at dusk and the distant chant of the Ganga Aarti carried on the water.
• Frame the palace with a long lens at first light, then let the boatman drift you south toward Chausatthi and Rana Mahal ghats for the full sweep of riverfront architecture.
• For vegetarian travellers, the lanes immediately behind Darbhanga Ghat are a joy and pose no dietary worry.
• A short walk up into Godowlia and Sonarpura brings you to celebrated pure-vegetarian institutions: Kashi Chat Bhandar for its legendary tamatar and palak chaat, Ram Bhandar in Thatheri Bazar (serving since 1887) for kachori-sabzi and jalebi, and Ksheer Sagar for spotless thalis and Banarasi sweets.
• One caution unique to Varanasi: several riverside lassi and thandai stalls sell bhang (cannabis) thandai — always ask explicitly for plain lassi or plain thandai, and stick to the trusted pure-veg sweet houses named here.