When Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II laid down the Pink City in 1727, he didn’t simply build walls to keep enemies out. He designed an entire cosmology with a planned city divided into nine celestial blocks, aligned to the stars, governed by ancient Vastu principles, that one could access through gateways. Each gate had specific connotations: either a direction, a deity, or a planet. Nothing was accidental; everything was with a purpose or intention.
The walled city, known locally as the Parkota, was India’s first truly planned urban settlement. Many historians believe seven gates originally protected it, and 2 more added later. The count now is nine. Other think the plan included 9 gates.
Many of Jaipur Retold’s walking tours include some of these Jaipur gates. We are sharing information about these beautiful gates you will see during our Jaipur walking tour here in this blog.
Vastu Purush Mandala is the basis of Jaipur’s master plan. Vastu Purush Mandala is a sacred diagram that divides space into blocks. Jaipur’s layout is inspired by the nine celestial planets, or Navagraha. Jaipur city plan was laid out as a 3×3 arrangement of nine rectangular blocks called chowkris, each with its own market, temple, and neighborhood identity.
Jaipur city gates were positioned not only for military defense but to align the city with the cardinal directions and with specific cosmic energies. Even today, Jaipur remains one of the few cities in India where this original grid is almost preserved.
Also known as Dhruv Pol.
This is where Jaipur began. According to local historians, the very foundation of the walled city started with this gate. The gate gets its name from Dhruv Tara, the Pole Star, which holds its fixed position in the northern sky. In the Maharaja’s celestial city plan, the north was the direction of stability, of permanence.
Later renamed Zorawar Singh Gate in honor of a notable general, this is the widest gate in the entire walled city. Its secondary arches on either side are notably broad compared to all others. It faces directly toward Amer town and connects Jaipur to the old Delhi road, making it the traditional entry point for travelers arriving from the north.
Even today, if you’re driving into Jaipur from Delhi via Amer, you pass through this gate. It is one of the most traversed and least acknowledged thresholds in the city.
What it hides
The foundation myth. Most visitors are told Jaipur was “founded in 1727” without ever being brought to the exact spot where the first foundation stone was placed. Many local historians believe it was right here, at the northern gate aligned with the immovable Pole Star; a deliberate choice by an astronomer-king who took celestial alignment seriously.
The Sun Gate
Named after Suraj, the sun, this gate faces east, the direction of sunrise. It is easily identified by the two sun motifs painted boldly on its facade, a visual declaration of its celestial identity. It has only one secondary gate beside it.
Walk out through Surajpole and the road takes you toward Galta Ji, the ancient temple complex carved into the hillside, famously called the Monkey Temple by international travelers. It also leads toward the Sun Temple built by Sawai Jai Singh II, making this gate a literal pilgrimage route embedded into the city’s architecture.
What it hides
Many historians believe Suraj Pol was the entry point for traders arriving from Agra, Delhi, and eastern India carrying precious stones, silver, and ornaments. But this is unverified.
The Moon Gate
Diagonally opposite Suraj Pol on the east-west axis sits Chandpole, the Moon Gate, and the pairing is entirely intentional. Sun and moon, east and west, the great axis of Jaipur’s cosmological blueprint runs right through the heart of the city. Chand Pol features a large primary door and two smaller secondary arches on either side.
What makes this gate unique is a Hanuman temple right next to it. Chand Pol’s guardian is Hanumanji, the protector deity revered across Rajasthan.
Around Chand Pol stretches one of Jaipur’s most active and authentic bazaars – Chandpole Bazar, a busy stretch of shops that sell items one would need everyday. Little has changed in its essential character over a period of three centuries.
What it hides
The oldest continuously operating market in Jaipur. While Johri Bazar gets the tourists and Bapu Bazar gets the cameras, Chandpole Bazar is where the city’s own residents have been buying their supplies. Chandpol Anaaj Mandi was a major place of commerce for decades until it shifted to a new location.
Also called Kishan Pol
The first of four southern gates, Ajmeri Gate is named for the direction it faces toward Ajmer, a city of profound spiritual importance as the site of the Dargah Sharif of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, a popular Sufi shrine. The gate commanded the westerly road out of Jaipur toward Ajmer, and for centuries this was a road of pilgrims as much as merchants.
Inside the walls, this gate opens into Kishan Pol Bazar. The gate’s architecture follows the standard pattern of a large central door flanked by two smaller secondary arches.
The New Gate
Of all the gates in the walled city, Naya Pol carries perhaps the most layered history. It was not part of the original plan which is precisely why it’s called “Naya,” meaning new. It was built in the middle of the twentieth century to replace a much older, far more secretive structure.
From Naya Pol if you look outward, you can see the Albert Hall Museum through the arch, a view that frames the colonial-era building against the old city wall in one of Jaipur’s most quietly dramatic sightlines. Inside, the road leads directly toward the Tripolia Gate of the City Palace.
Also called Shiv Pol
The third gate of the southern rampart connects Jaipur to Sanganer, a town seven kilometers to the south that has been synonymous with handmade paper and block-printed textiles for as long as anyone can remember. Travelers arriving from Sanganer, artists, papermakers, dyers, merchants of cloth, all entered the walled city through this arch.
Sanganeri Gate also provides direct access to Johri Bazar, Jaipur’s famous jewelry market through the interior lanes, making it a gate where art, craft, faith, and commerce have always mingled.
Also called Rampole.
The last of the four southern gates, Ghat Darwaza takes its name from the easterly road that leads toward Ghat ki Ghuni, a narrow mountain pass and popular scenic drive that connects Jaipur to the surrounding hills. Unlike its neighboring southern gates, this one has only a single secondary opening, giving it a slightly more austere character.
Its second name, Ram Pol, comes from what lies just inside: Ramganj Bazar, a neighborhood that has traditionally been associated with Muslim artisans and traders, adding another thread to the city’s layered communal fabric.
The Forgotten Pair in the Northwest and Northeast
Most accounts of Jaipur’s gates count to seven or eight and then stop. Samrat Gate and Ganga Pol are the least-known gateways in the walled city, tucked into the northern rampart near Zorawar Singh Gate and largely absent from the tourist circuit. Their obscurity, however, is part of their character.
Some historians believe Samrat Gate, in the northwest near the Brahampuri area, as “Brahma Pol” citing old records. Many believe it is named after Jagannath Samrat, the astronomer who assisted Sawai Jai Singh II in designing the city and the famous Jantar Mantar solar observatory. A gate named after the city’s chief planner, standing forgotten in a quiet residential quarter? Not fair!
Ganga Pol, to the northeast, is far grander in scale than Samrat Gate despite being equally unknown. The heritage hotel Samode Haveli stands close by, itself a magnificent structure which gives the neighborhood around Ganga Pol an elegance that belies its low profile. Both gates carry the same ornate floral motifs as the other city gates, but without the crowds, they can be examined at leisure.
Most of these gateways function today exactly as they always have as thresholds through which the city’s daily life passes without ceremony or self-consciousness. Unlike a museum exhibit or a heritage park, the gates of Jaipur’s walled city are alive in the most ordinary sense. Vegetable sellers park their carts around these ancient arches. Schoolchildren walk through on their way home. Auto-rickshaws navigate the narrower secondary openings with the precision of long practice.
The wall that once connected these gates is less intact than it should be. A 2021 drone survey identified over 3,100 unauthorized structures along the ramparts, and UNESCO’s inscription of the walled city as a World Heritage Site in 2019 has not yet reversed the slow erosion of what took “Mistri’s” years to build.
But the gates themselves, still stand. Each one remains a real threshold: step through it and you enter a different neighborhood, a different economy, a different set of sounds and smells and stories. The city is still arranged more or less as it was designed, in nine blocks, with nine gateways to match the nine planets.
The astronomer king, Sawai Jai Singh II built his city with precision: every gate a calculation, every arch an alignment. It’s a proof that the human and the celestial are not so far apart.
Next time you pass through one of these gates, you know there is an ancient science and mathematics behind it.
To witness the beauty of these magnificent gates of Jaipur and uncover, check out our walking tours. Beyond the Forts, Unravelling the Pink City, and Through Royal Footsteps.