Photo 212/4(38)

Genre: Architectural Photography

View from a courtyard looking towards the pyramidal superstructure rising above main residential block of the Nayaka Palace at Tanjore (Thanjavur). Lyon's 'Notes to accompany a series of photographs prepared to illustrate the ancient architecture of Southern India' (Marion and Co., London, 1870), edited by James Fergusson, gives the following description of this photograph: '407 - As the traveller approaches Tanjore, he sees two great pyramidal towers, so like one another in outline, that he is unable to distinguish which is the famed temple. When he gets close enough to make out the details, he easily discriminates which is the temple, but he must get very close indeed before he can realise that the other is not a temple at all, but covers a hall in the palace. It is not in itself ungraceful in outline, nor, excepting the Italian balusters, offensive in detail; but a style must be tottering to its fall which admits of such an absurdity. In design it is precisely analogous to those copies of the domes of St. Paul's and other churches, which architects are in the habit of perching on the roofs of palaces and other secular buildings at the present day. However beautiful they may be in themselves, they are absurdities where they have no meaning. This tower is over that part of the palace which is shown in Photograph 403, and at the opposite end of the court to the hall illustrated in 405 and 406.' Another copy at Photo 1000/30(3056).