Place · colonial memorial museum · India
Victoria Memorial, Kolkata
Also known as Victoria Memorial, VM Kolkata, Victoria Memorial Hall
The sixty-four-acre marble memorial on the Maidan built between 1906 and 1921 to Queen Victoria at Lord Curzon's initiative, designed by William Emerson in Indo-Saracenic style with a dome echoing St Paul's. The 25 galleries hold about 28,000 items including the Royal Gallery of Mughal and Rajput miniatures, Daniell watercolours of eighteenth-century India, and the paintings and statues that made it the Calcutta Presidency's imperial museum. After 1947 the memorial was reorganised as an Indian historical museum. The surrounding gardens — tanks, statuary, gazebos — are among the city's defining public spaces.
- Date
- 1906–1921
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Patron dynasty
- British Raj · Indian Union
- Tradition
- Standard reference; INTACH, ASI and municipal records; institutional histories.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 22.545, 88.343
Connections (1)
- Site withinKolkata
The Victoria Memorial sits on the Maidan in central Kolkata, built between 1906 and 1921 as the colonial state's architectural monument to Queen Victoria and converted after 1947 into an Indian historical museum. The sixty-four acres and the surrounding gardens are among the city's defining public spaces and the Memorial itself is Kolkata's most-visited heritage building.