uilt by Tipu in 1784, on the North side of the island of Seringapatam, the palace occupied the former site of a pavilion, the Mahanoumi Muntap, used by the Mysore rajas, and then as a barracks by Haidar. The design was taken from that of the palace at Sira, and the building is elaborately painted and gilded. Lady Clive, wife of the Governor of Madras and a keen traveller and collector in Mysore in 1800, described the building as 'decorated in the usual style, the walls being painted in brilliant colours, On one side Tipu had Baillie's defeat represented in a very ludicrous way…' She seems to have preferred the Lal Bagh palace, 'very beautiful…painted all over in white and gold.'

Tipu's father had established at Bangalore a garden with wide avenues and leafy glades. Buchanan notes that it was watered from a reservoir, and that 'in the means for watering the plots, there is not so much masonry or bricklayers work employed.' as in his son's gardens. In Tipu's garden at Bangalore, he had built three wells, from which water was raised by a means of a Capilly or leather bag, 'fastened to a cord passing over a pulley and wrought by a pair of bullocks, which descend an inclined plane.' At Seringapatam, the Darya Daulat is laid out formally, in the classical Persian style, although only one of the four original water courses survives. There is now little evidence there of the seeds and plants which were brought from Delhi, Lahore, Kabul and Kandahar or the citrus, mango and pineapple trees described by Colonel Walter Campbell in 1833.

At the East end of the island, Tipu developed another garden, planted with rose apples and custard apples, Persian peaches and ornamental trees, mulberries, oranges, mangoes and limes. It was here, in the garden that Haidar had first started, that Tipu built his father's mausoleum.