{"id":669131,"date":"2026-09-02T17:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/669131\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T17:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:41:15","slug":"royal-pavilions-stunning-indian-style-architecture-in-brighton-england-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/669131\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Pavilion’s stunning Indian-style architecture in Brighton, England : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FarFlungPostcard_Horz-LF.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Mughal arches, onion domes, chhatri-topped towers. Living in India for five years, I’d Instagram my way through a maharaja’s palace, Sikh temple or sultan’s fort every weekend. I got used to strolling through scalloped arches. How I miss them!<\/p>\n

Which is why I froze in my tracks last winter when I spotted this building in Brighton, on England’s south coast. The day was drizzly gray, I’d gone for a bracing swim in the English Channel, and was walking back to the train station, shivering, when I was flooded with warm memories from India.<\/p>\n

It’s the Royal Pavilion, built in the late 18th century by British royals fascinated by South Asian architecture, as they commandeered the subcontinent. It’s funny: In Mumbai, I’d marvel at how many buildings look Victorian, in the same stone and style of my husband’s hometown in northern England. Looking up at this pavilion, I realized the British didn’t just impose their style on India. They also took India’s style home.<\/p>\n

Queen Victoria herself \u2014 who also went by “Empress of India” \u2014 lodged in the Royal Pavilion in the 1830s and ’40s, before the construction of railways brought the working-class masses to Brighton \u2014 spoiling, she complained, her private seaside oasis. She decamped to Buckingham Palace and took the pavilion’s lotus-flower chandeliers with her. <\/p>\n

During World War I, the building became a military hospital, treating thousands of Indian soldiers fighting for the British. Separate kitchens catered to different castes.<\/strong> Muslim soldiers prayed to Mecca from the east lawn.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, the gardens designed for King George IV are being restored, a green lung for the city. They hosted some of the first weddings after the United Kingdom legalized same-sex marriage in 2014. And having survived centuries of royal caprice, and at least one arson attack, the pavilion is now a museum, open to the masses.<\/p>\n

I wonder what Queen Victoria would think of that.<\/p>\n

For more Far-Flung Postcards,\u00a0click here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mughal arches, onion domes, chhatri-topped towers. Living in India for five years, I’d Instagram my way through a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17],"class_list":["post-669131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117202681947610051","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}