VT : 132-year-old Mumbai’s heritage CST station

One of the busiest railway station in India, the Victoria Terminus now known as Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) opened in Bombay in 1888, but named “Victoria Terminus”, on 20^th June 1887, Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Day. In the 1850s, the Great Indian Peninsular Railway built its railway terminus covering 2.85 hectare, in the Bori Bunder area area used as a storehouse for imports and exports, along the Eastern shore line of Mumbai. On 2^nd July 2004, the station, a Victorian Gothic Revival architecture in India, was nominated as a World Heritage site by the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO.

The building designed by the British architect F W Stevens became the icon of Bombay as the ‘Gothic City’, and the major international mercantile port of India. The terminal was built over 10 years starting in 1878, according to a High Victorian Gothic design based on the late medieval Italian models with stone dome, turrets pointed arches and eccentric ground plan are close to traditional Indian palace architecture. The functional railway buildings is used by more than 3 million commuters daily. The doors and windows are made of BNurma teak wood with some steel windows mounted in the drum of the octagonal ribbed masonry dome with the coat of arms and corresponding painting in stained glass panels. There are large number of other embellishments which included gargoyles, allegorical grotesques carrying standards and battle axes, and figures of relief busts representing the different castes and communities of India. The entrance gate carry two columns, which are crowned, one with a lion representing United Kingdom and the other with a tiger representing India and there are tympana portraying peacocks.