The Victoria Memorial Hall was opened in 1921 and it is a memorial building dedicated to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India. It is located in Kolkata (Calcutta), the capital of West Bengal and a former capital of British India.
The building, the finest and most prominent building and art museum of Calcutta, serves as a tourist attraction, where everyone can admire pictures and statues of men who played a prominent part in the history of India.
Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, asked the people if they agree to built a spacious and grand monument, sourrounded by a great garden as a memorial to the Queen. Everyone was pleased and the princes and people of India responded generously to his appeal for funds and the total cost of construction of this monument.
The Royal Gallery
The Royal Gallery is the first hall of the building and visitors can admire oil paintings depicting scenes of Queen Victoria receiving the sacrament at her coronation in the Westminster Abbey in June 1838, the christening of the Prince of Wales in St. George's Chapel or the painting of Queen Victoria at the first Jubilee service in Westminster Abbey in 1887.
The Daniells
Thomas Daniell together with his 16 – years old nephew sailed out from Gravesend, destined for the East where they spent the next eight years. Some of the earliest glimpses of the city of Calcutta – its many new paladian building, roads and river ghats, temple and churches and forms of transport old and new- are captured in Thomas Daniell's twelve coloured aquatints, Views of Calcutta. The Victoria Memorial has the largest collection of the works by the two Daniells.
The Victorian Garden
The Garden is also one of the main attractions in Calcutta. Approaching the building from the south, visitors pass the King Edward VII memorial arch with a bronze equestrian statue of the King and the a bronze statue of Queen Victoria.
Image: wikimedia.org
A.V.
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