Empire Architecture - Buildings of British India – Kolkata, Mumbai & Delhi

Rooms are available at the hotel from 2.00pm on 2nd February, allowing for an early check-in today. The tour begins with a lecture and lunch in the hotel restaurant at c. 12.00 noon. Established as an East India Company trading post in 1690, Kolkata was to flourish after Clive’s 1757 victory at Plassey. From the 1770s till 1911 it served as the capital of British India. An afternoon walk taking in the buildings in the vicinity of Dalhousie Square: St John’s Church, with the tomb of Job Charnock the city’s founder, the Town Hall, Writers’ Building, General Post Office and High Court. First of three nights in Kolkata. 

St Paul’s Cathedral was one of India’s first buildings constructed in the Gothic Revival style. It contains many handsome memorials and a superb Burne-Jones window. The marble clad Edwardian Baroque Victoria Memorial was built to the designs of William Emerson, under the watchful eye of Lord Curzon. Designed by Charles Wyatt and completed in 1804, Government House (now known as the Raj Bhavan), is the grandest of Kolkata’s palaces. The Indian Museum was established in 1814 by the Asiatic Society; its present home opened in 1878 and was the work of Walter Granville, architect of the Post Office and the High Court. It contains India’s most important collection of sculpture.

Board the MV Paramhamsa and sail along the fertile banks of the mighty Hooghly River, where Hindus, Muslims, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish and French all founded settlements. We visit the city of Barrackpore, site of the first cantonment of the East India Company, and the former Danish colony of Serampore. Known for its 18th-century church, Serampore came under British rule in 1845. Lunch is spent on board before returning to Kolkata in the evening.

South Park Street Cemetery is a beautiful as well as poignant burial ground in which so many of Kolkata’s early British residents lie in or under uncommonly handsome classical monuments. Fly to Mumbai in the afternoon (IndiGo). First of four nights in Mumbai.

Our hotel, a celebrated Edwardian pile, one of the most famous in India, faces the Gateway of India, an Orientalised triumphal arch marking the spot where George V and Queen Mary landed in 1911. St Thomas’s Cathedral, is typical of so many Anglican churches in India: a Classical building adapted to the climate and filled with poignant monuments to British merchants, soldiers and administrators who never returned home. The Gothic Revival Afghan Memorial Church is also a melancholy reminder of the first of Britain’s several disastrous interventions in Afghanistan and Sind. The Prince of Wales Museum, an Edwardian building in the Indo-Saracenic style, houses a collection of both European and Indian paintings.

Visit Mani Bhavan, the house which was used as Gandhi’s political headquarters in Mumbai from 1917 until 1934 and from which he launched his campaign of civil disobedience against British rule. In the afternoon we visit the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, founded in 1855 as the Victorian and Albert Museum. 

Walk around the Victorian heart of Mumbai, seeing the major civic Gothic Revival buildings including the Secretariat, the High Court and the University. The University Library and Convocation Hall, erected from designs sent out by Sir Gilbert Scott, are two of the city’s more remarkable buildings. Others include Watson’s Hotel, a mid-Victorian structure of prefabricated cast-iron, and the ‘Tropical Gothic’ Victoria Terminus railway station which has a high-quality new museum. 

In the morning we experience a rather older India with a visit by boat to the famous caves on Elephanta Island, with their rock-cut architectural forms and sculptures dating from the 5th to the 8th centuries. Late-afternoon flight to New Delhi (IndiGo). First of four nights in New Delhi.

A day devoted to the magnificent Islamic architecture of Delhi. Delhi is a very ancient city but its principal architectural glories date from the 17th century when it was the capital of the Mughal emperors. Shah Jahan began the Red Fort and its palace in 1639 (the British nearly demolished them after 1857) with its open diwans (audience chambers) and the Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) of white marble. The huge Jami Masjid (Friday Mosque) with its two noble minarets is one of India’s very finest Islamic buildings.

Some of the fiercest fighting during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 took place in the area north of Old Delhi; we see the Flagstaff Tower and the Mutiny Memorial. It was here that the move of the capital from Kolkata to Delhi was announced at the 1911 Coronation Durbar; we then see the temporary Viceregal Lodge, built for occupation by the viceroys until the new palace Lutyens designed for them was ready. Located inside the Kashmir Gate of Old Delhi, scene of desperate fighting in 1857, is the distinctive St James’s or Skinner’s Church, built in the 1830s to the designs of a cavalry officer, Colonel James Skinner. 

The day is dedicated to New Delhi. Launched as a project in 1911 and inaugurated 20 years later. The magnificent group of government buildings at the heart of the low-density plan include the Secretariat and Parliament, both built to the designs of Sir Herbert Baker. The splendour of these is eclipsed by the Viceroy’s House (now residence of the President, the Rashtrapati Bhavan) in which Sir Edwin Lutyens integrated Mughal, Hindu and Buddhist elements into his monumental Classical concept. Also by Lutyens, Hyderabad House is one of the palaces built for native princes. Another such palace, Jaipur House, close to the All India Arch, is now the National Gallery of Modern Art. Among the buildings designed by Lutyens’ disciples are the Anglican cathedral by Henry Medd and the Garrison Church by Arthur Shoosmith, a 20th-century monument of rare distinction. 

The tour ends this morning. Transfers are arranged to Delhi airport for your onward journey.