Kolkata
India's cultural capital on the Hooghly River
Kolkata is India's city of intellect and nostalgia, a riverside metropolis of more than fifteen million that wears its faded grandeur with pride. Once the capital of British India, it remains the cultural heartbeat of the Bengali-speaking world, a place of poetry, cinema, fierce political debate, and crumbling colonial mansions. Yellow Ambassador taxis, hand-pulled rickshaws, and the country's oldest metro thread streets crowded with bookstalls and tea sellers.
The city stretches along the east bank of the Hooghly, a distributary of the Ganges, on the flat, humid lowlands of the Bengal delta not far above sea level. The Howrah Bridge, a vast cantilever span, links it to its twin city across the river and ranks among the busiest bridges in the world. Monsoon rains and the delta's sluggish drainage leave parts of the city prone to waterlogging, while the Sundarbans mangrove forest lies downstream toward the Bay of Bengal.
The English East India Company established a trading post here in 1690, and Calcutta grew into the capital of British India and the second city of the empire, a center of commerce, education, and reformist thought during the nineteenth-century Bengal Renaissance. The capital shifted to Delhi in 1911, and partition in 1947 brought waves of refugees from East Bengal. Renamed Kolkata in 2001, the city remains a powerhouse of literature, art, and football, and the gateway to eastern India.