The design and performance of an ancient passively cooled mahal (build
ing) have been presented. The mahal was generally used for pilgrims du
ring their visit to the city of Banaras. Energy balance equations for
different components, namely walls and roof, of a mahal have been used
to evaluate the performance of the mahal in terms of an enclosed-room
air temperature. It is observed that a reasonable thermal comfort tem
perature is achieved by ventilation using natural cold air through the
windows.