Crown and Canopy: Ranthambore’s Royal Legacy in Hospitality Interior Design

Abstract

Two things define Ranthambore: the memory of Rajasthan’s royal past, and a forest that has never really been tamed. Together they give the region a character that luxury hospitality here has started to lean on. This paper looks at how that pairing actually shows up inside hotel and resort interiors around Ranthambore. As wildlife tourism has grown, so has a fairly predictable design vocabulary — stone, arches, courtyards, textiles, earthy tones — borrowed from Rajasthan’s royal architecture. Used carelessly, this vocabulary risks turning into decoration rather than meaning — which raises this paper's central question: can a hotel honour Ranthambore's royal legacy without letting that heritage crowd out its wilderness? To work through this, properties in Ranthambore and Sawai Madhopur were studied through site visits, photographs and close reading of their spaces, materials and guest experience, with attention to how traditional references get adapted for comfort and how the landscape is folded into the interior through views and indoor–outdoor connections. What emerges is that luxury in Ranthambore doesn’t need to look like a rebuilt palace — it can just as easily sit in old craft, present-day comfort and the plain fact of being close to the wild. That is the logic behind this paper’s two terms: “Crown” for heritage and memory, “Canopy” for nature and wilderness, together making up a hospitality experience that could only really belong to Ranthambore