Showing 1-18 of 18 results
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Academy of Fine Arts
The bright, ground floor galley of the Academy of Fine Arts featuring local contemporary artists. The dusty upstairs museum has a room each of Mughal miniatures, old textiles, antique carpets and 20th-century paintings. There's also a special, air-conditioned shrine-like room displaying several watercolours by Bengali-Renaissance superstar Rabindranath Tagore.
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Asutosh Museum of Indian Art
The Asutosh Museum of Indian Art has priceless if slightly dry displays of fabulous antique Indian sculpture, brasswork and Bengali terracotta with some more light-hearted toys and 20th-century folk art upstairs. The museum is within Kolkata University, facing some grand, older collegiate buildings.
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Belur Math religious centre
Amid palms and manicured lawns, the extensive, peaceful Belur Math religious centre is the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission. Its centrepiece is the huge 1938 Ramakrishna Mandir ( -12.30 & - ) which manages to look like a cathedral, Indian palace and Istanbul's Aya Sofya all at the same time. That's perfectly in keeping with the message of 19th-century sage Ramakrishna Paramahamsa who preached the unity of all religions.
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Birla Mandir
The Birla Mandir is a large Lakshmi Narayan temple complex in cream-coloured sandstone whose three classically corn-cob shaped towers are more impressive for their size than their carvings. The temple was built between 1970 and 1996 by one of India's wealthiest clans.
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Birla Planetarium
Loosely styled on the Buddhist stupa at Sarnath, the Birla Planetarium is one of the world's largest and looks impressive when floodlit. Its outer circle forms a small but well-presented, tomb-like gallery featuring astronomer busts and planetary pictures. But the star shows are slow-moving and rather stilted.
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Botanical Gardens
The haven of Kolkata's Botanical Gardens is a welcome respite from the choking noise and crowds. The gardens were founded in 1786 and extend along the west bank of the Hooghly River. It was in these gardens that India's famous black teas were first developed after cuttings were spirited down from tribal regions in Assam.
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Howrah bridge
Howrah bridge, Kolkata's 700m-long architectural icon, is a vibrating abstraction of steel cantilevers, traffic fumes and sweat. Although over 60 years old it probably remains the world's busiest bridge.
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Indian Museum
Around central lawns, Kolkata's Indian Museum fills a glorious colonnaded palace with aging glass-and-hardwood display cabinets that are almost attractions in themselves. Exhibits range from fabulous Hindu bronzes to elephant skeletons. Notice the 2000-year-old eyeliner pencils, gag at the human embryos in formaldehyde and don't miss the impressive life-size reproduction of the 2nd century BC Barhut Gateway.
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Kali Temple
Between Kalighat and Jatin Das Park Metro stations, Kalighat's Kali Temple is Kolkata's holiest spot. The current structure, painted silver-grey with rainbow highlights, dates from 1809. Of course the site is many, many centuries older and possibly the source of Kolkata's name. Inside, pilgrims jostle to present hibiscus offerings to the three-eyed Kali image whose crown can occasionally be glimpsed through the throng from the bell-pavilion.
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Kolkata Zoo
The 16-hectare Kolkata Zoo first opened in 1875. The spacious lawns and lakeside promenades are very popular with weekend picnickers and although some big-cat cages are rather confining, it rates as one of India's best zoos. Until he died in March 2006 the oldest resident had been Adwaita, an approximately 200-year-old giant tortoise, once the pet of controversial colonialist Robert Clive.
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Marble Palace Mansion
The extraordinarily grand 1853 Marble Palace Mansion is indulgently overstuffed with statues and lavishly floored with marble inlay. Yet its fine paintings droop in their dusty frames and the antique furniture is haphazardly draped in torn old dust sheets. It would make a great horror-movie set.
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Motherhouse
Many visitors pay respects at Mother Teresa's large, sober tomb within the Sisters of Charity's Motherhouse. There's a small museum displaying Teresa's worn sandals and battered enamel dinner-bowl. Upstairs, 'Mother's room' is preserved in all its simplicity with a crown-of-thorns above her modest camp-bed.
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Nirmal Hriday
Next door to the Kali Temple is Mother Teresa's world famous, if surprisingly small, Nirmal Hriday home for the dying, with neo-Mughal minidomes pimpling the roof corners.
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Park Street Cemetery
Today Park St is one of Kolkata's top commercial avenues. But when built in the 1760s it was a simple causeway across uninhabited marshlands built for mourners to access the then-new Park Street Cemetery. Today that cemetery remains a wonderful oasis of calm with mossy Raj-era graves - from rotundas to soaring pyramids - jostling for space in a lightly manicured jungle. Buying the guide-booklet supports its maintenance.
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Sheetalnathji Jain Mandir
The most eye catching Jain temple on Badridas Temple St is the 1867 Sheetalnathji Jain Mandir, a dazzling pastiche of colourful mosaics, spires, columns and slivered figurines.
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St Paul's Cathedral
Whitewashed with a central crenellated tower, the 1847 St Paul's Cathedral would look quite at home in Cambridgeshire. Inside, its extraordinarily broad, unbutressed nave twitters with birdsong and retains the original hardwood pews. Don't miss the stained-glass west window by pre-Raphaelite maestro Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
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Tagore's House
Within Rabindra Bharati University, Rabindranath Tagore's comfortable 1784 family mansion (Tagore's House) has become a shrine-like museum to India's greatest modern poet. Even if his personal effects don't inspire you, some of the well-chosen quotations might spark an interest in Tagore's deeply universalist philosophy.
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Victoria Memorial
Had it been built for a beautiful Indian princess rather than a dead colonial queen, the incredible Victoria Memorial would surely rate as one of India's greatest buildings. It's a vast, beautifully proportioned confection of white marble domes set in attractive, well-tended parkland. Think US Capitol meets Taj Mahal.
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Showing 1-18 of 18 results
