What stuns a visitor to the Padmanabhapuram Palace in Kanniyakumari district is its construction in wood. A UNESCO report says it is an exceptional example of indigenous building techniques and craftsmanship in wood, a style unparalleled in the world and based on the historic building system, Taccusastra (the science of carpentry).
The palace, once the abode of Travancore kings built over many decades, had a very humble origin. The palace and the fort around it were mere mud structures with a thatched roof.
Writing in Kerala society papers, the late poet Kavimani Desigavinayakam Pillai says the granite structures at Padmanabhapuram and the Udayagiri Fort were “only the old mud walls (of about 1600 CE) rendered more secure and replaced with stones in subsequent years”.
