City Palace Udaipur: tickets, timings, history and how to plan a visit

Two official pages cover the City Palace Museum, and they do different jobs. One gives hours but no prices. The other gives prices but no date. This guide shows what each says, then where third-party sites disagree. How we write our guides explains how sources are chosen and dated.

City Palace Udaipur timings

The City Palace Museum’s plan-your-visit page lists visiting hours of 9:00 am to 9:00 pm. The same group’s museum page gives the same hours.

Some blogs still print 9:30 am to 5:30 pm. That looks like an older timing that has been copied from site to site. The museum’s own page does not support it. If you plan to arrive late, ask at the ticket counter how late entry is allowed, because the listed 9:00 pm is a closing time, not a last-entry time.

City Palace Udaipur ticket price

The museum’s own plan-your-visit page shows no prices, only a booking link. The fees below come from the group’s museum page. That page carries no date, so treat the table as the figure listed there and confirm it at the counter.

City Palace Udaipur ticket price for Indian visitors

The table above is the Indian-visitor schedule as far as the page shows. It makes no split by nationality. EaseIndiaTrip reports ₹300 for an adult and ₹100 for a child. Because no page dates its prices, we cannot say which is newer, but the official table is the one to start from. Ask at the counter before you queue.

What about foreign visitors?

We found no official foreigner rate. Neither official page lists one. One travel site, EaseIndiaTrip, reports ₹600 “as of 2025”, but that figure is unconfirmed by the museum. The museum’s online booking page would settle it, but it did not load for us because of a certificate error, so we have not read it.

What does the ticket cover?

The group page says the listed fees include the camera. Some third-party sites still list separate camera and video charges of ₹250 and ₹500. They appear to follow an older schedule, so ask whether anything extra applies to your phone or camera.

The Crystal Gallery is listed separately on the group’s Crystal Gallery page: 9:00 am to 6:30 pm, adult ₹500 and child ₹300, with photography strictly prohibited. That page is also undated. The museum ticket is not listed as covering it.

The museum lists audio guides in English, French, German and Spanish. The group page puts the fee at ₹200.

How long does a visit take?

Allow two to three hours for the museum alone, which is our estimate rather than a published figure. The palace is a series of courtyards, stairs and rooms rather than one open hall, so the time goes on walking between them. Add time if you take the audio guide or the Crystal Gallery.

Photo: Jakub Hałun · CC BY-SA 4.0

A sensible route: palace, temple, boat

The three stops sit close together. Jagdish Temple is about 0.2 km from the palace by road, around 5 min by car. The boat jetty at Rameshwar Ghat is about 1.3 km away. Gangaur Ghat is about 0.5 km.

1. Start at 9:00 am, when the museum is listed to open, and do the palace first.
2. Walk to Jagdish Temple next. Trawell reports it open from 5 am to 2 pm and 4 pm to 8 pm, so late morning or early evening both fit.
3. Finish with a boat on Lake Pichola, ideally in the late afternoon.

Do not count on a car reaching the jetty. Our road figures stop in the City Palace area, and we found nothing on whether cars may use the lanes beside the palace.

Jagdish Temple

Rajasthan Tourism lists the temple as built in 1651 by Maharana Jagat Singh I and dedicated to Vishnu. Trawell reports the hours above; the page carries no date and we found no trust page to confirm them. Darshan times can change, so check at the gate.

The lake boat

The group’s boat charter page lists the Jagmandir Island Palace excursion at ₹600 for an adult and ₹300 for a child, with sunset runs at ₹800 and ₹450. Its stated validity was 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, so that table has expired and no newer one is published. Treat these as the last listed figures, not current fares. See our Lake Pichola guide for more.

A short history

According to Wikipedia, Maharana Udai Singh II of the Sisodia family began the palace after moving his capital from Chittor to Udaipur in the 16th century. The article itself gives both 1553 and 1559, so the century is the safe statement.

The same article describes later Maharanas adding to the complex over about 400 years. It dates Badi Pol to 1600, Dilkhusha Mahal to 1620 and Tripolia gate to 1725. It also says a section became a museum in 1974. This is from a single source, so check dates with the museum’s own displays.

Who owns the City Palace?

Wikipedia’s infobox lists the Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation as owner and notes that parts of the complex run as heritage hotels. The same article describes a family dispute over the estate, with clashes reported in November 2024. For a visitor, the practical point is that the museum is run by the Mewar family’s trust, and the museum pages above are the ones to rely on.

Getting there from Sukher

Hotel Rudra Kripa is in Sukher, north of the old city. The City Palace is about 9.2 km by road from the hotel, around 25 min by car, so plan on a vehicle. Old-city lanes are narrow, so ask at reception where a driver can best set you down.