Calcutta’s Edifice: The Buildings of a Great City

Calcutta, the Star of the East, is a great city, a city of palaces, of people, and of ‘joy’. Calcutta’s buildings command attention in a compelling sense — akin to a great epic drama. When their serious pictorial sense is also considered, they become a grand display gallery. Because of its political and economic history, the city and its background have been lavishly documented. As a matter of record, it has considerable awareness of its own architectural heritage. Yet, Calcutta’s Edifice allows these buildings to ‘speak for themselves’. Illustrated by the author, the book strives to achieve a point of view not of a judge, but of an appreciator. With notes on the past and seductive speculations on the future, it examines the architectural and associated apparatuses of Calcutta, the great city, as it is.