Johri Bazar

This guide to Johri Bazar in Jaipur traces the market's start in 1727, when Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II built India's first planned Mughal-era city and, legend has it, was showered with gems rather than flowers on his first ride through its streets. It follows the Jain merchant families, the Shrimal and Osval clans, whose walled havelis and generations of goldsmiths still line the colonnaded shops today. Step into one of the side alleys off the main road, where an artisan may still be pressing sheet gold onto molten glass in the old Thewa style.