Victoria Memorial, Memorial museum in Central Kolkata, India
The Victoria Memorial is a memorial building and museum in Kolkata, built from white Makrana marble in the Indo-Saracenic style. The central dome rises to a height of 56 meters (184 feet), surrounded by four smaller corner domes and arcades of pale stone.
Lord Curzon commissioned the building in 1906 to honor Queen Victoria, and construction concluded in 1921 after 15 years of work. The Prince of Wales inaugurated the structure while India's political landscape was already beginning to shift.
The museum holds 25 galleries, including the Royal Gallery and the National Leaders' Gallery, plus the largest single collection of works by Thomas Daniell and his nephew William. The gardens, laid out by Lord Redesdale and David Prain, are tended by a team of 21 gardeners and hold statues of Warren Hastings, Cornwallis, Clive and Dalhousie.
The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 4:30 pm and closed on Mondays. The entrance is on Queen's Way, and the 64-acre grounds are laid out around the building, with the garden gates and the bridge on the north side designed by Vincent Jerome Esch.
The 4.9-metre Angel of Victory on the central dome was designed by Vincent Jerome Esch and cast by H.H. Martyn & Co. of Cheltenham, not Italy. It is fixed in place, not a weather vane. Curzon made the central chamber 64 feet across so it would be slightly larger than the Taj Mahal's.
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