Why Do Jaipur’s Streets Run in Straight Lines? A King & a Scholar Planned It 300 Years Ago

Google Maps went live on 8 February, 2005, but a Rajput king had planned an entire city around a grid 278 years earlier.  When Sawai Jai Singh II founded Jaipur in 1727, he laid out straight streets that crossed at right angles, divided the city into nine sectors and set standards for the height of its buildings and the width of its roads.  That plan still shapes the walled city today, and it began as the answer to a practical problem. A hilltop capital running out of options Before 1727, the Ka

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