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Just for a Change – A Little Old Bombay

Posted: March 28th, 2014 | No Comments »

Just for a change today, a few shots of old Bombay…

Elphinstone Square

Elphinstone Circle remains a marvellous site of old Bombay, and in pretty good nick considering (it helps that some of the shops at ground level have been refurbished with brands like Hermes moving in). The park in the middle of the circle is also still in fairly good working order. The Circle dates back to the 1840s and the park was long a favourite meeting spot for the city’s Parsi community.

Kala Ghoda

Kala Ghoda (which means black horse) was named after the black stone statue of King Edward VII. The statue was a gift from the Sassoon’s around 1870. It’s now housed at the V&A Museum (later renamed the Bhau Daji Lad Museum) in Byculla.

RAS Bombay

The Bombay Town Hall was built around 1830 and still stands and looks magnificent as an example of Greco-Roman influenced architecture in Bombay and rivals the British Museum building in London for grandeur. It was formerly the home of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bombay and remains in use as a library with 800,000 antique volumes (including, I believe, one of only two original copies of Dante’s Inferno)



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