Place · colonial luxury hotel · India
Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Mumbai
Also known as Taj Mahal Palace, Taj Hotel Mumbai, The Taj
The Jamsetji Tata-commissioned hotel on the Apollo Bunder facing the Arabian Sea, opened 16 December 1903 and the first fully electrified hotel in India. The hotel's Indo-Saracenic domed exterior by W.A. Chambers and Sitaram Khanderao Vaidya was Tata's statement to Bombay's colonial establishment after being refused entry to a European hotel on racial grounds — a story the hotel's publicity repeats and that is documented nowhere, but that captures the hotel's symbolic role. The 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks concentrated on the Taj, which was besieged for 60 hours; the hotel's reopening in August 2010 was treated as a city-defining moment.
- Date
- 1903–None
- Function
- Trade & production
- Patron dynasty
- Tata
- Tradition
- Standard reference; INTACH, ASI and municipal records; institutional histories.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.922, 72.833
Connections (1)
- Site withinMumbai
The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel sits on the Apollo Bunder facing the Gateway of India in south Mumbai's Fort district. Jamsetji Tata's 1903 opening of the hotel as his statement to Bombay's colonial establishment, the 2008 Mumbai attacks that concentrated on the Taj, and the hotel's 2010 reopening are all defining moments in the city's modern public memory.