7 Things to Do in Mandawa, Rajasthan's Open-Air Fresco Gallery

Mandawa sits in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, roughly 170 kilometres from Jaipur, and owes its unusual streetscape to the Marwari merchant families who grew wealthy trading out of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras in the 18th and 19th centuries. Much of that fortune travelled home in the form of havelis, grand courtyard mansions whose exterior and interior walls were covered floor to ceiling in painted frescoes, turning the town into what is often called an open-air art gallery.

1. Mandawa Fort

Built in 1755 and later converted into a heritage hotel, Mandawa Fort still anchors the town's centre, its ramparts and courtyards offering the clearest overview of the surrounding haveli cluster. Even for those not staying there, the fort's terraces are generally open to visitors for a fee.

2. Sneh Ram Ladia Haveli

One of the more elaborately painted mansions in town, its facade combines religious scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata with the stranger, more modern imagery Shekhawati painters became known for once European contact introduced new subjects to copy.

3. Goenka Double Haveli

A paired set of mansions built to face each other across a single street, the Goenka Double Haveli's murals mix mythological panels with locomotives, hot air balloons and early motor cars, a record of how quickly merchant families absorbed images of a wider world reaching them through trade.

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4. Arayish fresco technique, up close

The paintings were made using arayish, a technique similar to Italian fresco lustro, applied to wet plaster mixed with lime, marble powder, crushed seashell and curd, then polished with an agate stone once set. Look closely at any well-preserved wall and the surface has an almost lacquered sheen that later, cheaper repaint jobs elsewhere in Shekhawati don't replicate.

5. Mandawa's camel and jeep safaris

Beyond the town itself, the surrounding Shekhawati countryside is flat, sparsely populated desert scrub, covered on organised camel or jeep safaris that typically combine village stops with a sunset viewpoint over the dunes.

6. Chhatris and cenotaphs on the town's edge

Scattered around Mandawa's outskirts are chhatris, domed memorial cenotaphs built for the same merchant families whose havelis dominate the centre, often less visited than the main haveli circuit but similarly painted.

7. A walk without a fixed circuit

Unlike more curated heritage towns, Mandawa has no single ticketed route through its havelis; many are privately owned, some semi-derelict, and the pleasure is largely in wandering the lanes and looking up, since a number of the finest painted facades sit above shop fronts that give no hint of what's overhead.

Traveller tips

• Mandawa has no railway station of its own; Jhunjhunu, around 30km away, is the nearest railhead, with Jaipur the more practical airport link.
• October to March is the most comfortable season; Shekhawati summers are extremely hot.
• Several havelis charge a small entry fee collected by a caretaker rather than through any central ticketing system.
• Early morning light works best for photographing the painted facades, before the sun is directly overhead.