ਪਟਿਆਲਾਪਟਿਆਲਾ

Patiala is a city in the Malwa region of Punjab, India, founded in 1763 by Baba Ala Singh, who built the fort of Qila Mubarak around which the city grew. Capital of a princely state and later of PEPSU, it is called the Royal City for its palaces, gardens and courtly culture. The 2011 census counted 446,246 people.

Where is Patiala?

Patiala is in south eastern Punjab, in the Malwa region, at about 250 metres above sea level on the Indo Gangetic plain. Its district is ringed by Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar and SAS Nagar to the north, Sangrur and Malerkotla to the west, and the Haryana districts of Ambala, Kurukshetra and Kaithal to the east and south, and the Ghaggar, a seasonal river that floods in heavy monsoon years, is the district's main natural watercourse. The towns of its own district are its closest neighbours: Nabha about 25 kilometres away, and Rajpura and Samana each about 27 kilometres. Chandigarh, the state capital, lies to the north and its airport is Patiala's nearest international airport. The city's PIN codes begin 147001.

History: Baba Ala Singh and the Phulkian state

Patiala is a young city by Punjabi standards, and it begins with one man. Ala Singh, a Sidhu Jat chieftain whose family, the Phulkians, take their name from their ancestor Chaudhary Phul, assumed leadership of his clan in 1714 and built a small principality out of some thirty villages, working from Barnala. In 1763, after the Sikh capture of Sirhind, he laid the foundation of a mud fort on the village of Lehal and named the settlement growing around it from his own name: the patti, or land, of Ala. The fort, Qila Mubarak, the fort of felicity, was later rebuilt in baked brick, and bazaars such as Adalat Bazar and Dharampura Bazar grew up under its walls as traders, beginning with Hindu merchants from Sirhind, settled outside its Darshani Gate.

Ala Singh died in 1765, and his grandson Amar Singh received the title Raja i Rajgan and the right to strike coins. The state survived the decades of struggle between Mughals, Afghans, Marathas and the Sikh Empire of Lahore, and in 1808 its raja chose the protection of the British against Maharaja Ranjit Singh, a relationship formalised in 1809. Patiala became a 17 gun salute state, the largest of the Phulkian states, and its rulers were left to govern, build and collect while the rest of Punjab was absorbed around them.

The maharajas and the road to PEPSU

The nineteenth century maharajas gave the city its face. Karam Singh built the outer works of Qila Mubarak and the Ranivas, Narinder Singh fortified the city with ramparts and ten gates, of which the Sheranwala, Sirhindi, Sunami and Topkhana gates are among the survivors, and built the Darbar Hall in 1859. Mahendra Singh's reign saw Mohindra College founded in 1875, described in a Government of India district profile as the first college in the Punjab of today. Bhupinder Singh, who ruled from 1900 to 1938, was the most celebrated of them: a builder of palaces, the founder in 1936 of the Kali Devi Temple opposite the Baradari Gardens, and a sportsman who captained the first all India cricket team to tour England in 1911, brought MCC teams to India, donated the Ranji Trophy and built the Cricket Club of India in Bombay. His son Yadavindra Singh, the last maharaja, captained India at cricket in 1934, signed the state's accession to India and became Rajpramukh of PEPSU, the union of princely states of which Patiala was the capital. Partition in 1947 brought upheaval to the city, as its Muslim residents fled to Pakistan and Hindu and Sikh refugees arrived in their place, with the maharaja organising relief camps for the displaced.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 446,246 people in the city, making Patiala the fourth largest city in Punjab. Hindus formed 57.22 per cent of the city in 2011 and Sikhs 39.96 per cent, with Muslims at 1.87 per cent and Christians at 0.41 per cent. Punjabi is the language of the city, spoken in its Puadhi form east of the Sutlej. The climate is humid subtropical: the India Meteorological Department's normals give the city about 876 millimetres of rain a year, most of it in the monsoon, with May the hottest month at a mean maximum of about 39 degrees and winters that are cold and dry. The municipal corporation runs the city through 60 wards, and the Punjab level offices and institutions headquartered here, among them the Public Service Commission and the Department of Languages, keep Patiala an administrative city and not just a royal relic.

Palaces, gardens and sacred places

Qila Mubarak stands on about ten acres in the heart of the old city. Inside are the Qila Androon, the inner palace with its thirteen royal chambers painted in the Patiala style, the Ran Baas guest house and the Darbar Hall, now a museum displaying historic arms. The World Monuments Fund listed the complex among the world's 100 most endangered sites in 2004, and much of it remains closed, though the restored Ran Baas reopened as a heritage hotel in 2025. Across the old city, the Old Moti Bagh Palace holds the Sheesh Mahal, the palace of mirrors, whose frescoes were painted under Maharaja Narinder Singh, and a museum built around Maharaja Bhupinder Singh's collection of medals. The Baradari Gardens, the gardens of twelve gates laid out under Maharaja Rajinder Singh outside the Sheranwala Gate, hold the Rajindra Kothi, now a heritage hotel, and remain the city's favourite green space.

Patiala's sacred geography crosses faiths. The Kali Devi Temple on the Mall Road, built by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh in 1936, faces the Baradari Gardens and draws devotees through the year. Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran Sahib marks the place at Lehal village where, by the tradition preserved at the gurdwara, Guru Tegh Bahadur sat under a banyan tree by a pond on 24 January 1672 and the village's sickness lifted; devotees hold faith in the healing waters of its sarovar. Six kilometres out on the Chandigarh road, Bahadurgarh Fort, first built by the Mughal nawab Saif Khan in 1658 and renovated by Maharaja Karam Singh in 1837, holds Gurdwara Sahib Patshahi Nauvin, recalling Guru Tegh Bahadur's stay of three months and nine days.

Sport, music and learning

Sport is the maharajas' most useful legacy. The Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports, founded on 7 May 1961 and renamed in January 1973, is the academic wing of the Sports Authority of India and is described as Asia's largest sports institute. It occupies the Old Moti Bagh Palace across 268 acres, trains the coaches of Indian sport, and keeps a museum whose treasures include Major Dhyan Chand's gold medal from the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, the Great Gama's 95 kilogram training disc and P. T. Usha's shoes from the 1986 Seoul Asiad. Music has its own lineage: the Patiala gharana of Hindustani music, carried to fame by Ustad Ali Bux and his sons Ustad Akhtar Hussain Khan and Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Learning completes the trio: alongside Mohindra College stand Punjabi University, the Thapar Institute, the Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law and the Government Medical College, making Patiala one of Punjab's great student cities.

Getting there and Patiala today

Patiala railway station, about four kilometres from the city centre, has trains towards Delhi, Ambala, Bathinda and beyond, and National Highways 44 and 7 tie the city into the Delhi road network. The city's own small airport handles no regular commercial flights, so most travellers fly to Chandigarh. What they find on arrival is a city whose economy runs on government offices, universities, hospitals and the trade of a rich farming district, but whose imagination is still royal. The Patiala shahi turban, the paranda tassel, the pleated Patiala salwar, the embroidered jutti and the famously generous Patiala peg all carry the city's name across the Punjabi world, and the old city's bazaars still sell them within sight of the fort that started everything in 1763.