Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT)

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, the former Victoria Terminus, is a UNESCO-listed station and one of the most photographed buildings in Mumbai. Here is how to see it well.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, still widely called VT or CST, was built as the headquarters of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway to replace the older Bori Bunder station. Frederick William Stevens designed it from an initial watercolour by Axel Haig, and construction ran from 1878 to 1887, the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. It opened to the public in 1888 as Victoria Terminus.

The building mixes Victorian Italian Gothic with Indian motifs: a large ribbed central dome, turrets, pointed arches and carved stonework. It was renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in 1996 and gained the word Maharaj in 2017. The station is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and remains one of India's busiest, with 18 platforms serving long-distance and suburban trains; it is also the headquarters of the Central Railway zone.

Most visitors admire the facade from the forecourt or from across the road, where the whole front can be seen at once. The facade is lit in the evening. Railway staff run a heritage museum inside the building; secondary sources describe weekday visits for a fee, but these details have not been confirmed by Central Railway. The station sits at the northern end of the Fort district, a short walk from Flora Fountain and the Kala Ghoda precinct.