The General Amar Singh Kanota Library and Museum

The seat of the Thakurs of Kanota, Kanota Garh, a castle built in 1872, houses the collection of General Amar Singh Kanota Library and Museum Trust. The collection reflects a rich family tapestry and hold many objects that date back from Thakur Zorawar Singh's time, with gradual additions by other members of the family, especially the multi-faceted General Amar Singh. The displayed collection is broadly divided into two phases. Phase I showcases the life and artefacts from General Amar Singh Kanota while Phase II  is dedicated to the entire family showing visual archives of other members of Kanota family. 

The collections include diaries, paintings, maps, photographs, books and household accounts to carriages, arms, armour, and firearms. Part of the living heritage of Kanota, many of these objects are regularly used for ceremonial purposes. The introduction gallery houses the history of the Kanota family and collection of pocket maps of Amar Singh.  The Sports and Military section of the museum has objects such as rifles, long spears, trophies, and Amar Singh's uniform. The period library above the taikhana (basement) recreates Amar Singh’s library and personal rooms, offering visitors the opportunity to physically experience the spaces he lived in, the objects he used, and the books he selected lovingly and treasured. The display in taikhana recreates Amar Singh's life through objects and the spaces he inhabited. The family galleries exhibit an eclectic variety of objects, including reproductions where appropriate, especially for conservation reasons. 

General Amar Singh Kanota is perhaps the only member of the Rajput nobility to have developed and sustained a practice of writing/chronicling. He had the spirit of a scholar and thinker, writing a diary for 40 years from 1898 to 1942, leaving behind 89 volumes of what is perhaps the longest continuously-written diary in the world. A vast and astonishingly detailed resource for his times, it provides fascinating insights into British and Rajput life. His legacy also includes several thousand books he read—around 60 books a year—journals, manuscripts and magazines in both Hindi and English.