On weekdays, Fort is a place you move through. The offices are full, the pavements are a contact sport, and the buildings are something you glimpse between bus stops. On a Sunday morning the district empties out, the traffic thins to a few taxis, and you can finally see what the Victorians, and then the Art Deco builders of the 1930s, were trying to say. This is the walk I take visiting friends on, and the one I take alone when I need to remember why I live here.
It covers perhaps four or five km at an unhurried pace, with plenty of places to stop. Start early, around eight, before the heat, and wear shoes you do not mind getting dusty.
Flora Fountain and Hutatma Chowk
Begin at Flora Fountain, the ornate Victorian fountain crowned by a statue of the Roman goddess of flowers, which sits at the junction that gave the whole area its old centre. The square around it is officially Hutatma Chowk, Martyrs' Square, named for those who died in the Samyukta Maharashtra movement of the 1950s, the campaign that led to the creation of the state of Maharashtra with Bombay as its capital. The memorial stands nearby, and it is worth pausing at. The two monuments side by side, one to a Roman goddess and one to Marathi martyrs, are as neat a summary of the city's history as you will find.
From here, the streets fanning out are lined with banks and commercial buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of them in stone with carved details that nobody on a weekday has time to notice. On a Sunday you do.
The Oval Maidan and the ensemble
Walk south-west towards the Oval Maidan. This long, green ground is the hinge of one of the most remarkable urban views in India. On its eastern side stand the great Victorian Gothic public buildings: the Bombay High Court, and the University of Mumbai's Fort campus with the Rajabai Tower rising above it. On its western side, facing them across the grass, is a row of Art Deco apartment buildings from the 1930s, with their curved balconies, stepped towers and pastel facades.
In 2018 UNESCO inscribed the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai on its World Heritage list, and this face-off across the Oval is the heart of it. It is recognised not for any one building but for the ensemble, two architectural eras looking at each other across an open ground, with the city's recreational life happening in between. On Sunday mornings that means cricket, lots of it, played in overlapping matches with a tolerance for stray balls that would alarm a visiting insurer.
Stand near the middle of the maidan's western edge and look east. The Rajabai Tower, designed by the English architect George Gilbert Scott and completed in the 1870s, is the clock tower that anchors the whole view. The university grounds are not generally open for casual wandering, so the Oval is the best place to see the tower properly. Then turn round and look at the Art Deco buildings behind you, which are, in their way, just as ambitious.
Towards Kala Ghoda
From the southern end of the Oval, cross towards Kala Ghoda, the arts precinct packed into a few streets around the museum. The name means black horse, after an equestrian statue of King Edward VII that once stood here and was removed decades ago. A new black horse sculpture, in a very different style, now occupies the square and has become the district's photograph of choice.
Kala Ghoda is the densest cluster of cultural institutions in the city. Within a few minutes' walk you have:
- The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, the old Prince of Wales Museum, in its domed Indo-Saracenic building and gardens.
- The Jehangir Art Gallery, a modest modernist building that has been a meeting point for Indian art for decades, with the steps outside as much of an institution as the galleries inside.
- The National Gallery of Modern Art, in the round building nearby.
- A string of smaller private galleries in the lanes around, many of which open on weekends.
Walk down to the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, painted a striking blue, a reminder of the Baghdadi Jewish community that shaped much of this district. And make time for the David Sassoon Library, a Gothic building on the main road, named after the same community's most prominent patriarch. The library has a garden at the back, one of the calmest places in south Mumbai. Access and membership rules change, so check before you plan to linger.
If you are here in February, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival takes over the precinct for a little over a week, usually early in the month, with installations on the streets, talks, music and food stalls. It is wonderful and extremely crowded, and not at all the slow Sunday I am describing. Go twice: once for the festival, once on an ordinary Sunday to see the place breathe.
Lunch, and a detour or two
By now it will be close to noon and hot. Kala Ghoda and the surrounding streets have a good range of places to eat, from long-established seafood restaurants to newer cafés with courtyard seating. One thing to be aware of: several of the older Fort institutions, including some of the Irani cafés, keep their own hours and may not open on Sundays at all. Check before you set your heart on anywhere specific.
If you still have legs, two detours are worth it. North, towards Horniman Circle, you will find the colonnaded circle of buildings around a small garden, and across the road the neo-classical Town Hall, home to the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, with its famous flight of steps. Nearby is St Thomas Cathedral, the city's oldest Anglican church, cool and quiet inside. Alternatively, head south to the Gateway of India and the waterfront, though on a Sunday afternoon that is where everyone else will be.
Practical notes
A few things I have learned the hard way:
- Go early. From about eleven the sun on stone is punishing, and there is less shade than you would expect.
- Carry water and a hat. Many of the best views are from open ground.
- Museums and galleries have their own opening days and ticketing, and several close one weekday; check their official sites before you go.
- Photograph buildings freely from the street, but ask before photographing people, and respect signs inside religious buildings.
- Getting there is easy by local train to Churchgate or CSMT, both a short walk from Flora Fountain. Metro Line 3 also now serves south Mumbai, which helps from the western suburbs.
Why the slow version matters
The first time I did this walk properly, on foot and without a destination, I was startled at how little of it I had seen in years of passing through. You can commute past the Rajabai Tower for a decade and never really look at it. The Sunday walk is a small correction to that, a way of paying attention to a part of the city that was built to be looked at and is mostly hurried past.
It will not change your life. But you will come home with sore feet, a camera roll full of balconies, and the slightly proprietary feeling that the city is, in fact, yours. That is worth a Sunday.
