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The Directory › Asia › India › Mumbai
Plate III · iv · a · The City

Mumbai

One entry here, and it is the oldest museum in the city — kept, rather than merely retained.

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A nineteenth-century stone civic building in Mumbai seen across an empty garden at dusk
Plate III · iv · a · The garden side

A civic building put up with real conviction, and then — remarkably — looked after.

A day, properly arranged
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January, and the first hour. I went at no other time and would not now.

The entries

One, and I have stood in it.
A restored nineteenth-century gallery interior with columns, vitrines and a painted ceiling
Interior · the long room, cases in rows

A restoration that resisted the urge to improve. The room is allowed to be the nineteenth century, and the objects are allowed to be ordinary.

JANUARY, AT OPENING
Notes for Mumbai

One entry does not make a city, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. This is the museum I went for and the one I would send you to; everything else in Mumbai I saw as a visitor rather than as a curator, and it is not mine to write down yet.

Give it longer than it looks as though it needs. The cast gallery is the reason to come, and casts reward a second slow pass in a way that originals somehow do not — the first walk is inventory, the second is looking.

There is cake, and there is not much else, so eat before or plan for after. Cool months only, if you have the choice; I went in January and the building was doing its best work in that light.

← India Walked in January, in the first hour, with the cases still cool. Jaipur →