Jaipur city is located 268 km (167 miles) from the national capital New Delhi. The city was founded in 1727 by the Kachhwaha Rajput ruler Jai Singh II the ruler of Amer, after whom the city is named. It was one of the earliest planned cities of modern India, designed by Vidyadhar Bhattacharya. During the British Colonial period, the city served as the capital of Jaipur State. After independence in 1947, Jaipur was made the capital of the newly formed state of Rajasthan. The city is known for its beauty, and it is unique in its straight-line planning. Its buildings are predominantly rose-coloured, and it is sometimes called the “pink city.” The city’s urban planning shows an exchange of ideas from ancient Hindu and early modern Mughal as well as Western cultures.
Unlike other medieval cities of the region, Jaipur was deliberately planned as a new city located on the plains and open for trade, as opposed to cities on hilly terrain and military cities of the past, though its planning still responded to the surrounding hill tops in all topography. The city is surrounded by fertile alluvial plains to the east and south and hill chains and desert areas to the north and west. Jaipur is an expression of the astronomical skills, living traditions, unique urban form and exemplary innovative city planning of an 18th century city from India. Its streets feature rows that intersect in the centre and create large public squares called chaupars. Designed to be a commercial capital, the city has maintained its local commercial, artisanal and cooperative traditions to this day. The iconic monuments in the city include the Govind Dev temple, City Palace, Jantar Mantar, Hawa Mahal etc.
Criterion (ii):
The city was nominated for its value of being an exemplary development in town planning and architecture that demonstrates an amalgamation and important interchange of several ideas over the late medieval period. It shows an interchange of ancient Hindu, Mughal and contemporary Western ideas that resulted in the customised layout of the city.
Criterion (iv):
Jaipur represents a dramatic departure from extant medieval cities with its ordered, grid-like structure – broad streets, crisscrossing at right angles, earmarked sites for buildings, palaces, havelis, temples and gardens, neighbourhoods designated for particular castes and occupations. While the grid iron pattern of planning has been used historically in city planning, its application at such a monumental scale for a planned trade city, along with its particular urban form, makes it an important example in the history of urban planning of the Indian subcontinent.
Criterion (vi):
Historically, the city is said to have housed “chattis karkhanas” (36 industries), the majority of which included crafts like gemstones, lac jewellery, stone idols, miniature paintings, each with a specified street and market some of which continue to exist. There are 11 surviving crafts, and continuing building crafts of Jaipur contribute much to the conservation works of the city, and the renowned craftsmen from Jaipur continue to conserve and restore historic structures across many cities in India.
Source:
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1605/
https://www.britannica.com/place/Jaipur-India
https://www.makemytrip.com/tripideas/blog/city-palace-jaipur
https://www.jaipurstuff.com/seven-gates-of-walled-city-of-jaipur/
https://www.rajasthandirect.com/tourism/forts-and-monuments/city-palace-jaipur