Udaipur is a city as romantic as a dream, with marble palaces gently afloat in a lake surrounded by low lying hills and other impressive palaces dominating the skyline with their many turrets and cupolas, imposing doorways and delicately chiselled windows. The lake here was artificially created in the 14th century, two hundred years before the city was founded by the Maharanas of Chittorgarh as the capital of the indomitable Mewar. A bastion wall encircles it. There were five gates armed withiron spikes and the largest palace in Rajasthan, the City Palace, stands on the ridge, overlooking the steel blue waters of the Lake Pichola.