Mumbai Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

About Mumbai Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Mumbai Editorial Team

Regional Editor, South Asia: Tara de la Motte

Mumbai’s culture is best read on foot, in a few square kilometres of South Mumbai: a crescent of museums and galleries named after a black horse, two rows of buildings facing each other across a cricket ground, and India’s first multi-venue arts centre at the tip of Nariman Point. Further north, a new cultural centre has given the city a stage on a world scale. Here is the story behind them, and how to see them well.

Kala Ghoda, the art district

Kala Ghoda means “black horse”, and the name comes from a bronze equestrian statue of King Edward VII, sculpted by Sir Joseph Boehm, the gift of the philanthropist Albert Sassoon, and polished to a black finish. The statue was moved to the zoo at Byculla in 1965, but the name stayed. In 2017 the Kala Ghoda Association, working with the municipal corporation, commissioned a riderless bronze horse, The Spirit of Kala Ghoda, by the sculptor Shree Hari Bhosale, and it now stands at the entrance to K. Dubash Marg.

The association, formed on 30 October 1998 to care for the heritage and art district of South Mumbai, defines the precinct as a crescent running from Regal Circle at the southern end of Mahatma Gandhi Road to the University of Mumbai in the north, with the Oval Maidan on one side and Lion Gate on the other. Within it you find heritage buildings, galleries, museums, colleges, boutiques, cafés and restaurants, and the association has helped restore the Elphinstone College building and the Institute of Science.

In Kala Ghoda the city’s finest collections sit within a few minutes’ walk of one another, under the shade of old trees and Victorian stone.

The museums and galleries

The grandest collection is at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, the CSMVS, on Mahatma Gandhi Road, open from 10:15am to 6pm. Allow at least half a day: the long-running display “Journey Through Time” is on until November 2028, and the museum announces any closures on its own website.

Next door, the Jehangir Art Gallery holds changing exhibitions of contemporary art, and across the road the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai occupies the former Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall, designed by George Wittet in 1911. Only the façade survives: when the gallery opened on 23 December 1996, the architect Romi Khosla had redesigned the interior around a spiral, so that you climb through the collection as if through a shell.

For the commercial scene, Chemould Prescott Road, on the third floor of Queens Mansion in Fort, is open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm. Pair it with a browse through the bookshops of Kala Ghoda and a long lunch in one of the district’s cafés.

Gothic and Art Deco

Walk a few minutes west and Mumbai shows its two great architectural faces. Around the Oval Maidan, the city built Victorian Neo-Gothic public buildings in the second half of the 19th century; along the other side of the grass, the early 20th century added Art Deco apartment blocks and cinemas. UNESCO inscribed the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai as a World Heritage Site in 2018, and few places anywhere let you stand between two styles so complete. At the north of Fort, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, designed by F. W. Stevens and built over ten years from 1878, has been a World Heritage Site since 2004.

Look closely at the details as you walk: carved stone, wrought iron and coloured glass on the Gothic side; rounded balconies, stepped parapets and lettered names on the Art Deco side. Early morning is the time, before the traffic and the heat, when the light is soft on the stone.

The stages of Mumbai

At Nariman Point, the National Centre for the Performing Arts was inaugurated in 1969 as the first multi-venue, multi-genre cultural centre in South Asia, and it still programmes Western classical music, Indian music, theatre, dance and film. Inland, the Royal Opera House on Mama Parmanand Marg describes itself as India’s only surviving opera house; check its own listings for what is on. In Juhu, Prithvi Theatre stages plays most evenings; its box office opens from 1pm to 9pm, and it is closed on Mondays.

The newest stage is the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, part of Jio World Centre in Bandra Kurla Complex. Its Grand Theatre, with some 2,000 seats over three levels, opened on 31 March 2023 with “The Great Indian Musical: Civilization to Nation”, and the centre adds a Studio Theatre, The Cube and the Art House, a four-storey space for the visual arts. On Pedder Road, the National Museum of Indian Cinema, in the 19th-century Gulshan Mahal and its modern glass galleries, tells the story of Indian film.

The cultural calendar

November brings Art Mumbai, which returns to the Mahalaxmi Racecourse for its fourth edition from 12 to 15 November 2026, with 94 exhibitors. The NCPA International Jazz Festival 2026 begins on 20 November.

In the new year, Mumbai Gallery Weekend lists its 2027 edition for 14 to 17 January, with the city’s galleries opening together for four days. The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is held in January or February every year and runs for nine days, filling the district with public art, music, dance, theatre and heritage walks; the association announces each year’s dates on its own website.

What’s new

NMACC (checked October 2026): coming up at The Grand Theatre, “The Great Indian Musical: Civilization to Nation” returns from 25 November to 13 December 2026, and CHICAGO runs from 21 to 31 January 2027.

CSMVS (checked October 2026): the exhibition “Roots of a City – The Pathare Prabhus of Mumbai” opened on 19 May, alongside “Journey Through Time”.

Our advice

Stay in South Mumbai for a culture-focused visit. Spend one morning walking from CSMT through Fort to the Oval Maidan, and the rest of the day in Kala Ghoda at the CSMVS, the Jehangir and the NGMA. Keep an evening for the NCPA, with a walk along Marine Drive at sunset beforehand, and plan a winter trip around the gallery weekend or the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Mumbai Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story before you go.