Heritage of West Bengal
A palace with a thousand doors, some of them fake. Temples covered in baked-clay panels of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. A city two thousand years old under a village in North 24 Parganas.
Each place gets its story first and the practical part after: when to go, what to look for, and which district it is in.
Hazarduari: The Palace of a Thousand Doors
Built for a Nawab whose dynasty had already lost Bengal, with doors that open onto walls. And around it, the city that was once compared to London.
Heritage · BankuraBishnupur: Temples Made of Stories
A kingdom with no stone to build with, so it baked its temples out of earth and covered every inch in the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the life of Krishna.
Heritage · North 24 ParganasChandraketugarh: The Lost City Under the Paddy
Forty-odd kilometres from Kolkata, farmers ploughing their fields kept turning up tiny clay figures. They were standing on a city more than two thousand years old.
Heritage · MaldaGaur: The Capital the River Left Behind
Once one of the great cities of the world, now ruins among mango orchards on the Bangladesh border. And the village where Chaitanya changed two ministers’ lives.
Heritage · Cooch BeharCooch Behar: A Palace From Italy in North Bengal
The Koch kings ruled their own state until 1949. Their palace, built in 1887, looks as if it was lifted out of Renaissance Italy and set down among the rice fields.