Chepauk Palace
Red-brick eighteenth-century palace of wide arches, among the earliest Indo-Saracenic buildings.
Location
About this audio guide
This audio guide to Chepauk Palace in Chennai follows Paul Benfield, the English Company engineer turned contractor credited with raising its red-brick walls for the Nawab of the Carnatic in the seventeen sixties. It moves from the building site to the money behind it, the moneylending that made Benfield notorious, and the London politics where Edmund Burke took aim at him. Best heard facing the arches of the old palace blocks.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Amir Mahal
Royal residence of the Princes of Arcot, converted from an East India Company office building.
National Art Gallery
Red sandstone Indo-Saracenic hall modelled on a Mughal gateway, built as a craft showroom.
Senate House
Indo-Saracenic university hall of Byzantine arches, stained glass and carved Hindu deities.
Connemara Public Library
Indo-Saracenic public library from the eighteen nineties, a national depository for books printed in India.
Madras High Court
Red-brick Indo-Saracenic court complex with minarets, domes and a plaque marking a wartime shell hit.
Fort Saint George
Seventeenth-century English fortress where Madras began, now seat of the state legislature.