Cooch Behar Palace is the reason most travellers make the trip. Built in the late 19th century for Maharaja Nripendra Narayan, it borrows confidently from European palace architecture: long arcades, a central dome, Corinthian columns, and formal symmetry rather than the temple-like forms you might expect in Bengal.
Inside, the museum gives a glimpse of court life in the old princely state. Even if you skip the displays, the scale of the building and its broad grounds make it the defining sight of Cooch Behar.