Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus: History, Architecture and UNESCO World Heritage Status

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, known for most of its life as Victoria Terminus or VT, is the headquarters of the Central Railway and one of the busiest stations in India. It is also among the most extravagant railway buildings in the world. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 2004.

At a glance

• Location: Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra
• Inscribed: 2004
• Type: Cultural
• Built: 1878 to 1888
• Architect: Frederick William Stevens

History

The first passenger train in India ran from Bori Bunder, the site of the present station, to Thane on 16 April 1853. As Bombay grew into the chief port of western India, the Great Indian Peninsula Railway commissioned a headquarters to match. The building took ten years and was named for Queen Victoria in the year of her Golden Jubilee, 1887.

It was renamed after the Maratha king Shivaji in 1996, and the word “Maharaj” was added in 2017.

Architecture

Stevens designed the station in the Victorian Gothic Revival style, drawing on Italian medieval models, and worked into it the domes, turrets and pointed arches of Indian palace architecture.

• The dome: of stone, built without centering, and crowned by a statue of a woman holding a torch, representing Progress
• The facade: symmetrical, with projecting wings around a garden courtyard
• The ornament: carved stone foliage, animals and portrait heads, much of it made by students of the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay; a lion and a tiger, for Britain and India, guard the gateposts
• The interior: vaulted booking hall with coloured tiles, stained glass and polished stone columns

Why it is a World Heritage Site

UNESCO describes the terminus as an outstanding example of the meeting of two cultures, in which British architects worked with Indian craftsmen to create a style unique to Bombay.

A working station

About three million commuters pass through each day on suburban and long-distance trains. The station was one of the targets of the terrorist attack on Mumbai on 26 November 2008.

Visiting

The building is best seen from the street outside, especially when it is lit at night. A small railway heritage museum inside offers guided tours of parts of the building. Much of the surrounding district belongs to another World Heritage Site, the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai.

Image: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, formerly Victoria Terminus, Mumbai. Photo by Joe Ravi, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.