(continued from previous post)
Padmanabhapuram Because the complex stretches in width (do not go more than two floors), the visit is a relaxing walk in the cool jungle of rosewood, teak and mahogany carved, sanded, carved. The dark colors and warm environment to enhance the concentration and sometimes I get attacked by a reflexive sense of vertigo, as if the raja of Travancore had wanted to create in this place is not one of the many representations of the temporal power, but a space free from any influence mind. So even the magnificence and splendor seem to serve a higher purpose and with more human. By contrast I think of the delusion of omnipotence of Versailles or the Hermitage, metaphysics or mysticism Escorial del Quirinale. All sites that overwhelm human and make him feel inadequate and where the architecture is a metaphor, that refer to something else. Everywhere in the West will put on a comparison with the outside world - after an absence . But here in Padmanabhapuram everything turns inward, through which light is captured and guided gently, as on these floors and shiny blacks (obtained with a mixture of toasted coconut shells, sand, egg white, laterite and lime), we recall an image blur and flickering of our bodies.
After the actual room of the thalamus, consists of 16 wood species chosen by ayurvedic doctors, The visit continues in the elegant hall for performances of music, theater and dance, the only stone pillars carved in the Vijayanagara style. But it is clear to me that architecture is Padmanabhapuram sensual and alive, the masterpiece that the raja had thought of as a resting place not only their bodies but their souls. 
