Recently, Department of Archaeology in Jaipur held an exhibition in the popular JKK gallery on heritage site restorations undertaken by them in the last few years. The exhibition was aimed towards spreading awareness about heritage sites and how the department is working towards its restoration. A large part of the population is not even aware of the existence of such a department. Here are a few pictures of this exhibition.

A large number of conservations listed and shown in the exhibition were not in Jaipur, rather spread all over Rajasthan. Given the fact that there are a large number of heritage sites, which run in thousands, spread all over the state it is a herculean task to restore all of these. The department faces constraints of time and monetary resources. In light of the above, we need to appreciate their efforts.

I also felt that while some sites have been restored beautifully, some turned out more beautiful than their original conditions!!! Some sites have been restored using different stones than the original ones, which meant that the result is out of place (vis-a-vis original ones)!! I’m not sure if this is good or bad. It could be a technical reason for some stones may not be available for restoration, cost factor or the technique cannot be replicated. In any case, it is a better option to restore it rather than let it lie to crumble. It was a great effort by the department aimed towards educating the public about the efforts undertaken by them.