Kolkata neighbourhoods

North Kolkata

The old Bengali town that grew out of Sutanuti: lanes too narrow for a car, rajbaris with thakurdalans, sweet shops older than the railways and ghats where the day still starts with a dip in the Hooghly. This is the Kolkata of the Bengal Renaissance, of theatre, of adda on the rowak.

Central Kolkata

Dalhousie Square, Esplanade and Park Street were the showpiece of the British capital, and the lanes behind them became home to Armenians, Jews, Chinese, Parsis, Anglo-Indians and Marwaris. Churches, synagogues, a grand mosque and a Chinese breakfast market sit within a short walk of each other.

South Kolkata

From the temple town of Kalighat to the leafy avenues of Ballygunge and the student streets of Jadavpur, the south is where the twentieth-century Bengali middle class built its city: lakeside walks, cultural halls, sari shops and cabins that have fed three generations.

Behala & Southwest

Behala and Barisha were the seat of the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family, the zamindars who leased Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata to the East India Company in 1698. Their temples and family museum survive among busy markets, and the road runs on past Thakurpukur and Joka to the river at Budge Budge.

East Kolkata

Tangra’s Hakka Chinese tanneries turned into restaurants, Beliaghata kept the house where Gandhi fasted for peace in 1947, and beyond the Bypass lie the East Kolkata Wetlands, a Ramsar site whose fish ponds quietly clean the city’s waste water.

Salt Lake

Bidhannagar was reclaimed from salt marshes from the late 1950s and laid out in sectors and blocks. It is the calm, green face of the city: a large central park, a football stadium that has held some of the biggest crowds in the sport, and craft fairs through the winter.

New Town & Rajarhat

Wide roads, glass towers and big public spaces built since the 2000s on what were farms and fisheries. Eco Park, the cultural centres named after Tagore and Nazrul, and the Biswa Bangla Gate give it landmarks of its own.

Dum Dum & Lake Town

Dum Dum grew around an eighteenth-century artillery station and later the airport; today it is a dense residential suburb with one of the oldest surviving buildings in the region, Clive House. Lake Town and Bangur next door are known for their clock tower and for Durga Puja crowds.

Baranagar & Dakshineswar

A Dutch trading post before Calcutta existed, Baranagar later became the cradle of the Ramakrishna movement: the temple at Dakshineswar, the garden house at Cossipore where Sri Ramakrishna spent his last months, and the ruined house where his disciples formed their first monastery.

BT Road to Barrackpore

Follow Barrackpore Trunk Road north and the suburbs turn into a chain of old river towns: Panihati with its Vaishnav festival ground, Khardah with its temples, and Barrackpore with a riverside memorial to Gandhi. The army cantonment at Barrackpore is not open to visitors; the public riverfront is.

Hooghly Riverfront & Howrah

Kolkata faces its river from a line of ghats, some with colonial pavilions and some just steps into the water. Ferries cross to Howrah, where the botanic garden, the rail museum and Belur Math line the west bank.

Sharodotsav 2026
শুভ শারদীয়া