The Maharaja's 'new' palace, completed in 1881, was designed by Charles Mant, the architect who fashioned the Indo-Saracenic style of colonial architecture. The palace contains the Shahaji Chhatrapati Museum - a weird and wonderful array of the old maharaja's possession including his clothes, old hunt photos and memorial silver spade used by the maharaja to 'turn the first sod of the Kolhapur State Railway' in 1888.

The gun and sword collection is comprehensive, and the ashtrays and coffee tables made from tigers' and elephants' feet, not to mention the lamp stands from ostrich legs, are to be seen.