Edwina with Lord Mountbatten

The small room with a fireplace is where a handsome English sailor, visiting India in 1922 as part of the Prince of Wales’s entourage, had popped the question to the niece of Viceroy Lord Reading’s wife.

And the little wine cellar near the ballroom is where Bhagat Singh was held for his trial, years before that English sailor became the last Viceroy of India.

Louis Mountbatten’s proposal to Edwina Ashley, whom he had met at a house party, had caused Lady Reading to wistfully remark that her niece could have found someone with a more promising career ahead of him.

Years later, when Edwina returned as the Viceroy’s wife, she never lived in that building ? the Vice-Regal Lodge in Delhi’s Civil Lines area ? which had been converted into the office of the vice-chancellor, Delhi University.

That was in 1933. Now, 72 years later, the mansion that housed five Viceroys is back to its original glory.

A large part of the building, which covers 60,000 square feet of built area and four acres of gardens, still functions as an office. But to mark the end of a two-year restoration process, a permanent exhibition housed in some of its huge rooms was thrown open to the public on Thursday.

The Lodge’s history with the Mountbattens did not end with the proposal of marriage. They continued to share important milestones, leading Lord Mountbatten to observe in 1948: “It is a curious but, to my wife and to myself, a very pleasant coincidence that Delhi University should be celebrating the silver jubilee of its foundation in 1922; for we were married in that year and have just celebrated our silver wedding.

“The connection between these two events may not be immediately apparent until I tell you that the room in which I asked my wife to marry me in February 1922 was the room no. 13 which is now the registrar’s office.”

Though there is no documentary proof, Bhagat Singh is said to have been imprisoned in the building after his arrest. The lodge was to be handed over to Delhi University in 1930, but it got put off by three years as the martyr’s trial dragged on.

Others who were held at the Lodge include Rash Behari Bose and Aruna Asaf Ali, detained for their alleged role in the famous Delhi conspiracy.

Over the years, the Lodge acquired a shabby, run-down look. It was not until October 2002 that restoration began under architect Anupama Kohli.

When the badly designed false ceilings and partitions were stripped away, they revealed a ceiling as high as 22 feet.

From the shabby library has emerged a beautiful 135-feet-by-50-feet ballroom that can accommodate around 800 people. The Burma teak floors have, however, not stood the test of time and have been replaced with marble floors.

Anthropologist Andre Beteille recalls: “The library books were so heavy, they had sunk and gone through the floor.”

The original stone floors of the Oval Room adjacent to the ballroom, however, are intact.