Vogue India’s September 2022 issue, features La Martinière—the spectacular, newly restored palace-turned-school in Lucknow. Soldier, harem owner, hot-air balloonist... few adventurers are quite as swashbuckling as Claude Martin, a Frenchman in 18th-century India who would go on to become a potentate of vast wealth. Needing a mansion to match his new-found standing, the wily Frenchman built an elegant house on the banks of the Gomti river and filled it with Enlightenment-era treasures. He never saw the mansion completed, but made arrangements for it to be endowed as a boys’ school, named La Martinière College, along with two others in Calcutta and Lyon. Thanks to a disparate band of tireless champions including conservation architect Dr Neeta Dass, principal Carlyle McFarland, and the generosity of the school’s alumni, along with organisations such as Alliance Française in India, #LaMartinière once more stands gleaming. Visit vogue.in to take a look inside the spectacular, newly restored palace-turned-school in #Lucknow. Words by Cosmo Brockway (cosmobrockway) Photographs by James McDonald (@james_mcdonald_photography)