Accessibility links Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player Open Navigation Menu --> Newsletters NPR Shop Get NPR+ Close Navigation Menu Home News Expand/collapse submenu for News National World Politics Business Health Science Climate Race Culture Expand/collapse submenu for Culture Books Movies Television Pop Culture Food Art & Design Performing Arts Life Kit Gaming Music Expand/collapse submenu for Music Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions Podcasts & Shows Expand/collapse submenu for Podcasts & Shows Daily Morning Edition Weekend Edition Saturday Weekend Edition Sunday All Things Considered Up First Here & Now NPR Politics Podcast Featured Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Fresh Air Wild Card with Rachel Martin It's Been a Minute Embedded Get NPR+ More Podcasts & Shows Search Newsletters NPR Shop Get NPR+ Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions About NPR Diversity Support Careers Press Ethics Royal Pavilion's stunning Indian-style architecture in Brighton, England Looking up at this 18th century building, it became clear the British didn't only bring their architectural style to India. They also took some of India's style home. Special Series Far-Flung Postcards Greetings from the Royal Pavilion, a stunning reminder of India in southern England September 2, 202610:30 AM ET Lauren Frayer
Lauren Frayer/NPR 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!
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.
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.
Queen Victoria herself — who also went by "Empress of India" — lodged in the Royal Pavilion in the 1830s and '40s, before the construction of railways brought the working-class masses to Brighton — spoiling, she complained, her private seaside oasis. She decamped to Buckingham Palace and took the pavilion's lotus-flower chandeliers with her.
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. Muslim soldiers prayed to Mecca from the east lawn.
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.
I wonder what Queen Victoria would think of that.
For more Far-Flung Postcards, click here.
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