St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral on Cathedral Road in the Maidan area of Kolkata, West Bengal, India, and one of the city's best-known landmarks. The church belongs to the Church of North India and was consecrated in 1847. It was designed by Major William Nairn Forbes of the Bengal Engineers in an Indo-Gothic style, and its central tower was modelled on the Bell Harry Tower at Canterbury Cathedral. The original steeple was damaged by earthquakes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and was rebuilt, giving the present tower its slightly different profile.

Visitors step into a long, high nave with a vaulted ceiling, slender pillars, and a floor of polished stone. The interior is notable for its stained glass, including a large west window designed by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, and for memorial tablets, plaques, and statues commemorating colonial-era officials and soldiers. A large pipe organ stands in the nave, and wooden pews fill the main hall. The building is bright and airy compared with many older churches in India, helped by tall windows and ceiling fans along the aisles.

The cathedral sits in a landscaped compound with lawns and trees, and the exterior is worth a circuit for its pointed arches, buttresses, and pale plastered walls. The most atmospheric time inside is late afternoon, when sunlight comes through the coloured glass and falls across the nave. The best photographic angle for the whole facade is from the front lawn near the gate, while the interior is best photographed from the back of the nave looking toward the altar, where respectful photography is generally tolerated outside services.

A typical visit lasts thirty to forty-five minutes. The cathedral is quietest on weekday mornings and early afternoons and busiest during Sunday services and around Christmas, when the midnight service on Christmas Eve draws large crowds and seating can fill quickly. It stands beside the Nandan film complex and the Academy of Fine Arts and a short walk from Victoria Memorial, so it fits easily into a Maidan-area itinerary.