On our 30th wedding anniversary, my husband and I were in different cities and we decided to celebrate it the following Saturday by having dinner at the very exclusive Taj Falaknuma Palace Hotel at the other end of town. As I was going through some old picture albums, I noticed that ten years ago at about our 20th wedding anniversary we had made a trip to the Falaknuma Palace which was not open to the public but had just been taken over by the Taj Hotel group to be converted to a palace hotel. We had taken some pictures at that time.
As a postscript, we did visit the Taj Falaknuma and felt the grandeur of the place, the ambience and the food bringing back the Nizam culture alive and here are some pictures we took.
Finally, we didn't make it to the Taj Falaknuma Palace Hotel, because on that day, the hotel staff rang us up and said that there was a curfew in the Old City because an MLA Akbaruddin had been shot and was critical and they anticipated riots. There went our dinner celebration! I thought such things can only happen in the Old City which is a law unto itself! The MLA was walking and there came a mob with swords and shot him and stabbed him.....some land dispute. The MLA survived and there were no riots, thankfully.
Just a little further up from Charminar, past the Shah Ali Banda area, the road reaches the Falaknuma Palace. The sixth Nizam's prime minister and relative, Nawab Vikar-ul-Umra had constructed this palace, translated as 'mirror in the sky' in the shape of a scorpion. It was the last word in luxury and grandeur and the Nawab invited the Nizam to visit it. The Nizam, inspite of being the richest man in the world (the Times Magazine had him on its cover seventy years ago for this reason), was bemused by this array of splendour and coveted it. The Nawab then presented the Falaknuma Palace to the Nizam. The Nizam never stayed here but this palace hosted royalty from all over the world. In 2000 the Falaknuma Palace was leased to the Taj Hotel group for a period of 30 years to begin with, and its restoration has been supervised by Princess Esra, the Turkish first ex-wife of the current Nizam who lives in Turkey. After ten years the Falaknuma Palace was opened as the Taj Falaknuma in November 2010. What is worth noting are the frescoes on the ceiling of the state reception room; the two ton manually operated organ said to be the only one of its kind in the world in the ballroom; the large and rare collection of books, paintings, statues, furniture and manuscripts; the jade collection; the famous 100 seating dining table with rosewood carved chairs and green leather upholstery with tableware of gold and crystal; the walnut carved roof of the library modelled on the one at the Windsor Castle; the Venetian chandelier collection including the 138 arm Osler chandelier.
