Jaisalmer and they used to bring dry fruits from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Jaisalmer was a dry port for a long time hence the traders accumulated quite a good amount of money Patwas were the businessmen dealing in Zari and Badla work, used to dwell in and constructed various houses known as Havelis. The most elaborate and beautifully carved Havelis belong to the Bafna family still living in Jaisalmer. Here we have a row of five beautifully carved Havelis built during the period 1800-1860 AD. The havelis have such a beautiful and ornate carving, still gazing with naked eye, one fails to understand whether it has been carved on stone or wood. Inside the Haveli, there are also beautiful wall paintings, golden coloured roofs, magnificently carved rooms, lamp stands, niches and beautifully carved doors. Patwon-ki-Haveli- are situated on northern fringes of the town. The Patwon-ki-Haveli- is part of a larger complex of five havelis lined up wall to wall forming a sort of haveli row.

These multistories residences of haveli row are clear, but always maintaining a kind of tenuous connection with richer merchants, the affluence of their owners, is expressed in their strikingly superior craftsmanship and design. Its magnificent façade is viewed across on open forecourt. Above the arches of the ground floor are the more intricate shapes of numerous projecting balconies, some cubical, some hexagonal, some square, some tall, each with its own distinctive, windows and roof. The building rises from a dark somber arched base, across the light iridescent stone screens of those balconies above to the open balustrade at the top and then dissolves into the sky. Inside, this Haveli is an intensely refreshing experience, a maze of spaces as diverse complex as its façade.

There is an awesome silence in these spaces, perhaps because of the absence of furnishings, or perhaps because of the cave like hunted quality of these stone rooms where one can be completely alone, cut off. Every movement in and out of the rooms or up and down the house is carefully articulated into the design.

It is one of the roofs where you see the real extravagance of work, testing perhaps the creativity of his architect. It is a roofs cape of complete madness-payful and orderly in its own way. You can walk up Eschersque staircase of along the rims of light wells, look through elaborate openings, across roof tops, beyond the cubical maze of house to that gleaming fort beyond.

Traditional houses in Jaisalmer has evolved out of the natural order imposed by harsh desert climate. A sandstone construction of small room, closely clustered around a courtyard, gave the house the essential shape of a rectangular box, closed from the sided but open to the sky. In such an introverted plan, the courtyard was the only source of light and air. Stone screens surrounding it provided the much needed privacy. The house turned its back on the desert wind and harsh glare and created within its shadow a refreshing micro climate.