Vicky Kaushal's Wedding Venue: Six Senses Fort Barwara

When Vicky Kaushal married Katrina Kaif on 9 December 2021, the ceremony drew substantial media coverage in India. His Wikipedia biography records that it took place at the Six Senses Resort at Fort Barwara in Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan. The venue deserves its own story: it is a restored fort with a long history and an unusually documented conservation effort.

A fort that was left to decay

Architectural Digest India describes Fort Barwara as a nearly 700-year-old fort, about a 30-minute drive from Ranthambhore National Park. Historically, it says, the fort served as a station of war for whichever kingdom controlled the region, housing troops, arms and ammunition. After British rule and independence, the fort, except for a palace and two temples, was left to nature.

A summary of a Six Senses journal page calls it a 14th-century fort, so descriptions of its age differ slightly. Both agree it is old, and the decay was real. Parul Zaveri of the conservation practice Panika recalled that when the owning family first approached her team, "the site was a scary place to step into".

The restoration

Panika, the practice she co-founded with her late husband Nimish Patel, was entrusted with the work in 2011, according to the magazine. It took about a decade. The team studied cracks, foundations and finishes in walls that are five feet thick and up to 20 feet high in places, and the guiding principle was that any redesign should be based on research and use local materials, artisans and labour where possible.

Several choices stand out. The spartan Mardana Mahal, the former residence of the men of the ruling family, now houses reception and a lounge. The Zanana Mahal, the women's palace, was covered in relief motifs and Shekhawati frescoes, so its rooms became the spa's treatment rooms. A previously undiscovered storage area under the plinth of the Mardana Mahal became a banquet space for 200 guests, replacing a new structure that had been planned elsewhere. Architectural Digest India says that space was the venue for the Vicky and Katrina wedding.

Working with the climate

The designers used traditional methods for practical reasons. The suites line the fort walls, which were refilled with a rubble and lime mix where repairs were needed, giving thermal insulation and reducing the concrete used. North-facing rooms have fewer windows because winter winds arrive from the northeast, and courtyards let in sun in winter and help air move in summer.

The reuse process provides 100 days of rainwater, and more than 370 species of grasses, shrubs and trees planted across the property are native to the region and need little water.

What the resort is now

Architectural Digest India describes it as India's first Six Senses spa resort, with 48 suites, a 30,000-square-foot spa housed in heritage structures and two swimming pools. Finding craftspeople with inherited skills was difficult, it reports, because their numbers have dwindled, so the team brought in different groups of artisans for different tasks.

A note on weddings and heritage

Hosting events can help pay for conservation, and the banquet space was created from a part of the fort that was already there. But a heavily publicised wedding also brings crowds and a spotlight, and the sources we read do not discuss how the resort handles that. We do not report anything about the wedding itself beyond the date and venue given in public biographies.

What we could not confirm

We read most of the Architectural Digest India feature and the Wikipedia biography, but the Six Senses page was blocked for us, so the 14th-century date comes from a search summary of that page. We did not verify the number of suites or the size of the spa independently. We have no information on the cost of the restoration or on the rates charged for events.

Sources

*Cover photo: Vice President's Secretariat, Government of India, Wikimedia Commons (GODL-India).*