The Mohatta Palace is a museum located in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. Designed by Agha Ahmed Hussain, the palace was built in 1927 in the posh seaside locale of Clifton as the summer home of Shivratan Mohatta, a Hindu Marwari businessman from what is now the modern day Indian state of Rajasthan. The palace was built in the tradition of stone palaces of Rajasthan, using pink Jodhpur stone in combination with the local yellow stone from nearby Gizri. Mohatta could enjoy this building for only about two decades before the Partition of British India, after which he left Karachi for the new state of India.
The palace has an area of 18,500 sqrt ft. and its facade is trimmed with windows, stone brackets, spandrels, domes, balustrades with floral motifs and exquisite railings. There are nine domes, with a centre dome in the middle; while the windows in the front portion opening out into the garden are of blue color and those in the rear area are arched windows with stained glass. The palace has large stately rooms designed for entertainment on the ground floor and more private facilities on the first floor, where there is a terrace provided with a shade from intense sunlight. The palace is solely made up of teak wood with a polished staircase, long corridors and doors opening within doors
Mohatta
Palace is an elaborate building with intricate details which are present in
almost every portion of this magnificent building. These are in the form of
carvings. The delicate designs include bird’s wings in the large windows,
situated in the top right and left corners of the arches.
There are also peacock motifs
in the stonework and they are found around each of the nine domes. Also, there
has been a lot of use of the scallop shape in upwards and downward positions
around the lower areas, in the form of a strip going around the building and on
top of the first and second-floor windows that protrude outwards. There are
also many floral motifs around the surrounding wall, between each scallop, such
as marigolds. Hibiscus flowers to are found lightly carved between rectangular
shapes underneath all the windows, which are on the sides of the doorways.
