01The minister’s house
After the murder of the young Peshwa Narayanrao in 1773, Nana Phadnavis and the barbhai council ruled in the name of the infant Sawai Madhavrao and kept the state together through the war with the English, which ended at Salbai in 1782. In 1780 Nana built this wada. Its front is a sober Maratha street facade, three storeys of wood and stone around inner courtyards, with a long hall on the upper floor carved in teak, where Nana received envoys and kept the daftar. The house saw the high years of Mahadji Scindia’s alliance and the victory over the Nizam at Kharda in 1795, and then the confusion after Sawai Madhavrao’s fall that year. Nana died in Pune on 13 March 1800.
02After the Peshwas
When the British took Pune in 1817–18 the wada passed into government hands, and the Peshwa’s capital became a cantonment town of the Bombay Presidency. The house itself survived where so much of Peshwa Pune burned or was pulled down, and Pune Municipal Corporation has since restored it. The carved wooden pillars and brackets of the old diwankhana are the part to look at, and the lane outside still leads to the Delhi Gate of Shaniwar Wada, whose own palace buildings burned in 1828.
The life of this place
- 1780Nana Phadnavis builds the wada near Shaniwar Wada.
- 13 March 1800Nana Phadnavis dies in Pune.
- 1817–18With the fall of the Peshwa the wada passes to the British government.
In Shaniwar Peth, beside Shaniwar Wada; best seen together with it.
