Lal Bagh Palace

The Holkars' 28-hectare European fantasy on the Khan river: a palace built between 1886 and 1921 with Italian marble columns, Belgian stained glass, a rococo ballroom, and entrance gates modelled on Buckingham Palace's. Most tourists skip it. Most tourists are wrong.

Where Rajwada is a facade with a story, Lal Bagh is an interior with a lifestyle. The state rooms survive with their original furniture, chandeliers and moulded ceilings — you walk through a genuinely intact slice of how India's richest royals lived in 1920. The ballroom with its sprung wooden floor is the showpiece.

It is startlingly uncrowded. On a Tuesday morning we shared the entire palace with two other families. At ₹20 a head with free parking, the value is absurd — the gardens alone are worth the ticket in winter.

Give it 90 minutes: an hour inside, half an hour for the grounds and the gates. Photography rules inside change periodically, so ask at the ticket window rather than assuming.