Often the Sunday night illuminations of Mysore Palace attract the most attention, but the murals adorning the interiors of Mysore Palace are the city’s real show stealers. Created in the early 1900s, they offer a window to a lost world of glittering pomp, when the royals celebrated Dushera with lavish processions involving thousands of participants and animals. Every detail, from the ornate military uniforms to designs moulded on the golden elephant howdahs, is rendered in glowing colour.

When you add the paintings of the Wadiyaar family, the collonaded halls, and the beautiful carved furniture and doors in silver, ivory and teak to the other treasures the place holds, it is a wonder that any of its thousands of visitors ever choose to leave the building.