Mumbai’s Iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel Inauguration In An Ad From 1903

“The Taj Hotel is on such a scale of magnificence and luxury that at first it rather took one’s breath away. There is no other hotel in India which will bear comparison with it, as it is in a rank of its own,” said GA Mathews back in 1905, in his Diary Of An Indian Tour.

Having opened for business in 1903, Mumbai’s iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel recently joined a very special, elite international club, along the likes of the Empire State building, the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera house, being the first Indian structure to be trademarked. It is said that Jamshedji Tata built the hotel as a reaction to being denied entry Watson’s Hotel, which at the time was a ‘white’s only’ establishment. He set out to create something “worthy of Bombay” and really lived up to this statement.

Architecturally created in an Indo-saracenic style, this hotel gifted the citizens of Mumbai an experience unlike any other hotel in the country. We recently stumbled across an advertisement for the inauguration of the ‘diamond by the sea’ and, boy were we glad!

The advertisement announces the opening of the “luxuriously furnished” hotel with “all latest comforts” and from what we can tell, the room charges started at only INR 6! Don’t believe us? Take a look at what is possibly the establishment of a symbol of Mumbai city’s spirit that stood the as a testament to time itself.